. 


BY  JOHN  DEWEY 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DARWIN  ON  PHILOSOPHY 
GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY  AND  POLITICS 
RECONSTRUCTION  IN  PHILOSOPHY 
HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

With  other  authors 
CREATIVE  INTELLIGENCE 


HUMAN  NATURE 
AND  CONDUCT 

An  Introduction  to  Social  Psychology 


BY 
JOHN  DEWEY 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT.  1922. 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


First   Printing,  Jan.,   1922 
Second   Printing,  Mar.,   192* 
Third    Printing.   June,    1924 
Fourth  Printing,  Aug.,  1921 
Fifth  Printing,  Nor.,  192* 
Sixth  Printing,  April,  1933 
Seventh  Printing,  Dec.,  1923 
Eighth  Printing,  March,  1924 
Ninth  Printing,  June,  1927 
Tenth  Printing,  July,  1928 


PRINTED   IN    THE    U.  S.  A.  BY 

tt  Onton  &  aw«tn  Company 


BOOK      MANUFACTURERS 
KAHWAY  NEW    JERSEV 


t> 


PREFACE 

Cop*  2- 

In  the  spring  of  1918  I  was  invited  by  Leland  Stan- 
ford Junior  University  to  give  a  series  of  three  lec- 
tures upon  the  West  Memorial  Foundation.  One  of 
the  topics  included  within  the  scope  of  the  Founda- 
tion is  Human  Conduct  and  Destiny.  This  volume  is 
the  result,  as,  according  to  the  terms  of  the  Founda- 
tion, the  lectures  are  to  be  published.  The  lectures  as 
given  have,  however,  been  rewritten  and  considerably 
expanded.  An  Introduction  and  Conclusion  have  been 
added.  The  lectures  should  have  been  published  within 
two  years  from  delivery.  Absence  from  the  country 
rendered  strict  compliance  difficult;  and  I  am  indebted 
to  the  authorities  of  the  University  for  their  indulgence 
in  allowing  an  extension  of  time,  as  well  as  for  so  many 
courtesies  received  during  the  time  when  the  lectures 
were  given. 

Perhaps  the  sub-title  requires  a  word  of  explanation* 
The  book  does  not  purport  to  be  a  treatment  of  social 
psychology.  But  it  seriously  sets  forth  a  belief  that 
an  understanding  of  habit  and  of  different  types  of 
habit  is  the  key  to  socffl.  psychology,  while  the  opera- 
tion of  impulse  and  intelligence  gives  the  key  to  indi- 
vidualized mental  Activity.  But  they  are  secondary  to 
habit  so  that  mind  can  lie  understood  in  the  concrete 
only  as  a  system  of  beliefs,  desires  and  purposes  which 
are  formed  in  the  interaction  of  biological  aptitudes 
with  a  social  environment.  J.  D. 

February,  1921. 


1 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 1 

Contempt   for   human   nature;   pathology   of  good- 
ness; freedom;  value  of  science. 


SECTION  I:  HABITS  AS  SOCIAL  FUNCTIONS          .        .        13 

Habits    as    functions    and    arts;    social   complicity; 
subjective  factor. 

SECTION  II:  HABITS  AND  WILL 24 

Active    means;    ideas    of    ends;    means    and    ends; 
nature  of  character. 

SECTION  III:  CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT     ...       43 
Good   will   and  consequences;   virtues   and   natural 
goods;  objective  and  subjective  morals. 

SECTION  IV:  CUSTOM  AND  HABIT 58 

Human  psychology  is  social;  habit  as  conservative; 
mind  and  body. 

SECTION  V:  CUSTOM  AND  MORALITY     ....       75 
Customs    as    standards;    authority    of    standards; 
class  conflicts. 

SECTION  VI:  HABIT  AND  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY  .        .       84 
isolation  of  individuality;  newer  movements. 

PART  TWO 
THE  PLACE  OF  IMPULSE  IN  CONDUCT 

SECTION  I:  IMPULSES  AND  CHANGE  OF  HABITS  .        .       89 
Present  interest  in  instincts;  impulses  as  re-organ- 
izing. 

v 


vi  CONTENTS 

PAGH 

SECTION  II:  PLASTICITY  OF  IMPULSE.        ...       95 
Impulse  and  education;  uprush  of  impulse;   fixed 
codes. 

SECTION  III:  CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  .        .        .     106 
Habits  the  inert  factor;  modification  of  impulses; 
war  a  social  function;  economic   regimes   as  social 
products;  nature  of  motives. 

SECTION  IV:  IMPULSE  AND  CONFLICT  OF  HABITS      .      125 
Possibility  of  social  betterment;  conservatism. 

SECTION  V:  CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS          .        .     131 
False    simplifications;    "self-love";    will    to    power; 
acquisitive  and  creative. 

SECTION  VI:  No  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS         .        .        .      149 
Uniqueness    of     acts;     possibilities     of     operation; 
necessity  of  play  and  art;  rebelliousness. 

SECTION  VII:  IMPULSE  AND  THOUGHT         .        .       .     169 


SECTION  I:  HABIT  AND  INTELLIGENCE        .        .        .     172 
Habits  and  intellect;  mind,  habit  and  impulse. 

SECTION  II:  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THINKING   .        .      181 
The  trinity  of  intellect;  conscience  and  its  alleged 
separate  subject-matter. 

SECTION  III:  THE  NATURE  OF  DELIBERATION  .      189 

Deliberation  as  imaginative  rehearsal;  preference 
and  choice;  strife  of  reason  and  passion;  nature  of 
reason. 

SECTION  IV:  DELIBERATION  AND  CALCULATION         .      199 
Error  in  utilitarian  theory;  place  of  the  pleasant; 
hedonistic  calculus;  deliberation  and  prediction. 

SECTION  V:  THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD       .        .        .     210 
Fallacy  of  a  single  good;  applied  to  utilitarianism; 
profit  and  personality;  means  and  ends. 


CONTENTS  vii 

PAGE 

SECTION  VI:  THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS    ....     223 

Theory  of  final  ends;  aims  as  directive  means;  ends 
as  justifying  means;  meaning  well  as  an  aim;  wishes 
and  aims. 

SECTION  VII:  THE  NATURE  OF  PRINCIPLES       .        .     238 
Desire  for  certainty;  morals  and  probabilities;  im- 
portance of  generalizations. 

SECTION  VIII:  DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE        .        .     248 
Object    and    consequence    of    desire;    desire  -and 
quiescence;    self-deception    in    desire;    desire   needs 
intelligence;  nature  of  idealism;  living  in  the  ideal. 

SECTION  IX:  THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  .        .        .     265 
Subordination  of  activity  to  result;  control  of  fu- 
ture; production   and  consummation;   idealism  and 
distant  goals. 

PART  FOUR 
CONCLUSION 

SECTION  I:  THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY    ....     278 
Better   and   worse;   morality  a  process;     evolution 
and    progress;     optimism;     Epicureanism;     making 
others  happy. 

SECTION  II:  MORALS  ARE  HUMAN       ....     295 
Humane  morals;  natural  law  and  morals;  place  of 
science. 

SECTION  III:  WHAT  is  FREEDOM?       ....     303 
Elements    in    freedom;    capacity    in    action;    novel 
possibilities;  force  of  desire. 

SECTION  IV:  MORALITY  is  SOCIAL       ....     314 
Conscience  and   responsibility;   social  pressure   and 
opportunity;  exaggeration  of  blame;  importance  of 
social    psychology;    category    of    right;    the    com- 
munity as  religious  symbol. 


INTRODUCTION 

"Give  a  dog  a  bad  name  and  hang  him."  Human 
nature  has  been  the  dog  of  professional  moralists,  and 
consequences  accord  with  the  proverb.  Man's  nature 
has  been  regarded  with  suspicion,  with  fear,  with  sour 
looks,  sometimes  with  enthusiasm  for  its  possibilities 
but  only  when  these  were  placed  in  contrast  with  its 
actualities.  It  has  appeared  to  be  so  evilly  disposed 
that  the  business  of  morality  was  to  prune  and  curb 
it ;  it  would  be  thought  better  of  if  it  could  be  replaced 
by  something  else.  It  has  been  supposed  that  morality 
would  be  quite  superfluous  were  it  not  for  the  inherent 
weakness,  bordering  on  depravity,  of  human  nature. 
Some  writers  with  a  more  genial  conception  have  at- 
tributed the  current  blackening  to  theologians  who  have 
thought  to  honor  the  divine  by  disparaging  the  human. 
Theologians  have  doubtless  taken  a  gloomier  view  of 
man  than  have  pagans  and  secularists.  But  this  ex- 
planation doesn't  take  us  far.  For  after  all  these  the- 
ologians are  themselves  human,  and  they  would  have 
been  without  influence  if  the  human  audience  had  not 
somehow  responded  to  them. 

Morality  is  largely  concerned  with  controlling  human 
nature.  When  we  are  attempting  to  control  anything 
we  are  acutely  aware  of  what  resists  us.  So  moralists 
were  led,  perhaps,  to  think  of  human  nature  as  evil 

1 


2  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

because  of  its  reluctance  to-  yield  to  control,  its  rebel- 
liousness under  the  yoke.  But  this  explanation  only 
raises  another  question.  Why  did  morality  set  up 
rules  so  foreign  to  human  nature?  The  ends  it  insisted 
upon,  the  regulations  it  imposed,  were  after  all  out- 
growths of  human  nature.  Why  then  was  human  nature 
so  averse  to  them?  Moreover  rules  can  be  obeyed  and 
ideals  realized  only  as  they  appeal  to  something  in  hu- 
man nature  and  awaken  in  it  an  active  response.  Moral 
principles  that  exalt  themselves  by  degrading  human 
nature  are  in  effect  committing  suicide.  Or  else  they 
involve  human  nature  in  unending  civil  war,  and  treat 
it  as  a  hopeless  mess  of  contradictory  forces. 

We  are  forced  therefore  to  consider  the  nature  and 
origin  of  that  control  of  human  nature  with  which 
morals  has  been  occupied.  And  the  fact  which  is  forced 
upon  us  when  we  raise  this  question  is  the  existence 
of  classes.  Control  has  been  vested  in  an  oligarchy. 
Indifference  to  regulation  has  grown  in  the  gap  which 
separates  the  ruled  from  the  rulers.  Parents,  priests, 
chiefs,  social  censors  have  supplied  aims,  aims  which 
were  foreign  to  those  upon  whom  they  were  imposed, 
to  the  young,  laymen,  ordinary  folk ;  a  few  have  given 
and  administered  rule,  and  the  mass  have  in  a  passable 
fashion  and  with  reluctance  obeyed.  Everybody  knows 
that  good  children  are  those  who  make  as  little  trouble 
as  possible  for  their  elders,  and  since  most  of  them 
cause  a  good  deal  of  annoyance  they  must  be  naughty 
by  nature.  Generally  speaking,  good  people  have  been 
those  who  did  what  they  were  told  to  do,  and  lack  of 


INTRODUCTION  3 

eager  compliance  is  a  sign  of  something  wrong  in  their 
nature. 

But  no  matter  how  much  men  in  authority  have 
turned  moral  rules  into  an  agency  of  class  supremacy, 
any  theory  which  attributes  the  origin  of  rule  to  de- 
liberate design  is  false.  To  take  advantage  of  condi- 
tions after  they  have  come  into  existence  is  one  thing; 
to  create  them  for  the  sake  of  an  advantage  to  accrue 
is  quite  another  thing.  We  must  go  back  of  the  bare 
fact  of  social  division  into  superior  and  inferior.  To 
say  that  accident  produced  social  conditions  is  to  per- 
ceive they  were  not  produced  by  intelligence.  Lack  of 
understanding  of  human  nature  is  the  primary  cause 
of  disregard  for  it.  Lack  of  insight  always  ends  in 
despising  or  else  unreasoned  admiration.  When  men 
had  no  scientific  knowledge  of  physical  nature  they 
either  passively  submitted  to  it  or  sought  to  control  it 
magically.  What  cannot  be  understood  cannot  be 
managed  intelligently.  It  has  to  be  forced  into  subjec- 
tion from  without.  The  opaqueness  of  human  nature 
to  reason  is  equivalent  to  a  belief  in  its  intrinsic  irregu- 
larity. Hence  a  decline  in  the  authority  of  social 
oligarchy  was  accompanied  by  a  rise  of  scientific  interest 
in  human  nature.  This  means  that  the  make-up  and: 
working  of  human  forces  afford  a  basis  for  moral  ideas 
and  ideals.  Our  science  of  human  nature  in  comparison 
with  physical  sciences  is  rudimentary,  and  morals 
which  are  concerned  with  the  health,  efficiency  and 
happiness  of  a  development  of  human  nature  are 
correspondingly  elementary.  These  pages  are  a  dis- 


4  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

cussion  of  some  phases  of  the  ethical  change  involved 
in  positive  respect  for  human  nature  when  the 
latter  is  associated  with  scientific  knowledge.  We 
may  anticipate  the  general  nature  of  this  change 
through  considering  the  evils  which  have  resulted  from 
severing  morals  from  the  actualities  of  human  physiol- 
ogy and  psychology.  There  is  a  pathology  of  good- 
ness as  well  as  of  evil ;  that  is,  of  that  sort  of  goodness 
which  is  nurtured  by  this  separation.  The  badness  of 
good  people,  for  the  most  part  recorded  only  in  fiction, 
is  the  revenge  taken  by  human  nature  for  the  injuries 
heaped  upon  it  in  the  name  of  morality.  In  the  first 
place,  morals  cut  off  from  positive  roots  in  man's  nature 
is  bound  to  be  mainly  negative.  Practical  emphasis 
falls  upon  avoidance,  escape  of  evil,  upon  not  doing 
things,  observing  prohibitions.  Negative  morals  assume 
as  many  forms  as  there  are  types  of  temperament  sub- 
ject to  it.  Its  commonest  form  is  the  protective  colora- 
tion of  a  neutral  respectability,  an  insipidity  of  char- 
acter. For  one  man  who  thanks  God  that  he  is  not 
as  other  men  there  are  a  thousand  to  offer  thanks 
that  they  are  as  other  men,  sufficiently  as  others  are 
to  escape  attention.  Absence  of  social  blame  is  the 
usual  mark  of  goodness  for  it  shows  that  evil  has  been 
avoided.  Blame  is  most  readily  averted  by  being  so 
much  like  everybody  else  that  one  passes  unnoticed. 
Conventional  morality  is  a  drab  morality,  in  which  the 
only  fatal  thing  is  to  be  conspicuous.  If  there  be  flavor 
left  in  it,  then  some  natural  traits  have  somehow  escaped 
being  subdued.  To  be  so  good  as  to  attract  notice  is 


INTRODUCTION  5 

to  be  priggish,  too  good  for  this  world.  The  same 
psychology  that  brands  the  convicted  criminal  as  for- 
ever a  social  outcast  makes  it  the  part  of  a  gentleman 
not  to  obtrude  virtues  noticeably  upon  others. 

The  Puritan  is  never  popular,  not  even  in  a  society 
of  Puritans.  In  case  of  a  pinch,  the  mass  prefer  to  be 
good  fellows  rather  than  to  be  good  men.  Polite  vice 
is  preferable  to  eccentricity  and  ceases  to  be  vice. 
Morals  that  professedly  neglect  human  nature  end  by 
emphasizing  those  qualities  of  human  nature  that  are 
most  commonplace  and  average;  they  exaggerate  the 
herd  instinct  to  conformity.  Professional  guardians  of 
morality  who  have  been  exacting  with  respect  to  them- 
selves have  accepted  avoidance  of  conspicuous  evil  as 
enough  for  the  masses.  One  of  the  most  instructive 
things  in  all  human  history  is  the  system  of  concessions, 
tolerances,  mitigations  and  reprieves  which  the  Catholic 
Church  with  its  official  supernatural  morality  has  de- 
vised for  the  multitude.  Elevation  of  the  spirit  above 
everything  natural  is  tempered  by  organized  leniency 
for  the  frailties  of  flesh.  To  uphold  an  aloof  realm  of 
strictly  ideal  realities  is  admitted  to  be  possible  only 
for  a  few.  Protestantism,  except  in  its  most  zealous 
forms,  has  accomplished  the  same  result  by  a  sharp 
separation  between  religion  and  morality  in  which  a 
higher  justification  by  faith  disposes  at  one  stroke  of 
daily  lapses  into  the  gregarious  morals  of  average 
conduct. 

There  are  always  ruder  forceful  natures  who  can- 
2iot  tame  themselves  to  the  required  level  of  colorless 


6  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

conformity.  To  them  conventional  morality  appears 
as  an  organized  futility;  though  they  are  usually  un- 
conscious of  their  own  attitude  since  they  are  heartily 
in  favor  of  morality  for  the  mass  as  making  it  easier 
to  manage  them.  Their  only  standard  is  success,  put- 
ting things  over,  getting  things  done.  Being  good  is 
to  them  practically  synonymous  with  ineff ectuality ; 
and  accomplishment,  achievement  is  its  own  justifica- 
tion. They  know  by  experience  that  much  is  forgiven 
to  those  who  succeed,  and  they  leave  goodness  to  the 
stupid,  to  those  whom  they  qualify  as  boobs.  Their 
gregarious  nature  finds  sufficient  outlet  in  the  con- 
spicuous tribute  they  pay  to  all  established  institu- 
tions as  guardians  of  ideal  interests,  and  in  their 
denunciations  of  all  who  openly  defy  conventionalized 
ideals.  Or  they  discover  that  they  are  the  chosen 
agents  of  a  higher  morality  and  walk  subject  to  spe- 
cially ordained  laws.  Hypocrisy  in  the  sense  of  a 
deliberate  covering  up  of  a  will  to  evil  by  loud-voiced 
protestations  of  virtue  is  one  of  the  rarest  of  occur- 
rences. But  the  combination  in  the  same  person  of 
an  intensely  executive  nature  with  a  love  of  popular 
approval  is  bound,  in  the  face  of  conventional  morality, 
to  produce  what  the  critical  term  hypocrisy. 

Another  reaction  to  the  separation  of  morals  from 
human  nature  is  a  romantic  glorification  of  natural  im- 
pulse as  something  superior  to  all  moral  claims.  There 
are  those  who  lack  the  persistent  force  of  the  executive 
will  to  break  through  conventions  and  to  use  them  for 
their  own  purposes,  but  who  unite  sensitiveness  with 


INTRODUCTION  7 

intensity  of  desire.  Fastening  upon  the  conventional 
element  in  morality,  they  hold  that  all  morality  is  a 
conventionality  hampering  to  the  development  of  indi- 
viduality. Although  appetites  are  the  commonest  things 
in  human  nature,  the  least  distinctive  or  individualized, 
they  identify  unrestraint  in  satisfaction  of  appetite 
with  free  realization  of  individuality.  They  treat  sub- 
jection to  passion  as  a  manifestation  of  freedom  in  the 
degree  in  which  it  shocks  the  bourgeois.  The  urgent 
need  for  a  transvaluation  of  morals  is  caricatured  by 
the  notion  that  an  avoidance  of  the  avoidances  of  con- 
ventional morals  constitutes  positive  achievement. 
While  the  executive  type  keeps  its  eyes  on  actual  condi- 
tions so  as  to  manipulate  them,  this  school  abrogates 
objective  intelligence  in  behalf  of  sentiment,  and  with- 
draws into  little  coteries  of  emancipated  souls. 

There  are  others  who  take  seriously  the  idea  of 
morals  separated  from  the  ordinary  actualities  of  hu- 
manity and  who  attempt  to  live  up  to  it.  Some  become 
engrossed  in  spiritual  egotism.  They  are  preoccupied 
T?ith  the  state  of  their  character,  concerned  for  the 
purity  of  their  motives  and  the  goodness  of  their  souls. 
The  exaltation  of  conceit  which  sometimes  accompanies 
this  absorption  can  produce  a  corrosive  inhumanity 
which  exceeds  the  possibilities  of  any  other  known  form 
of  selfishness.  In  other  cases,  persistent  preoccupation 
with  the  thought  of  an  ideal  realm  breeds  morbid  dis- 
content with  surroundings,  or  induces  a  futile  with- 
drawal into  an  inner  world  where  all  facts  are  fair  to 
the  eye.  The  needs  of  actual  conditions  are  neglected, 


8  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

or  dealt  with  in  a  half-hearted  way,  because  in  the  light 
of  the  ideal  they  are  so  mean  and  sordid.  To  speak  of 
evils,  to  strive  seriously  for  change,  shows  a  low  mind. 
Or,  again,  the  ideal  becomes  a  refuge,  an  asylum,  a  way 
of  escape  from  tiresome  responsibilities.  In  varied  ways 
men  come  to  live  in  two  worlds,  one  the  actual,  the  other 
the  ideal.  Some  are  tortured  by  the  sense  of  their 
irreconcilability.  Others  alternate  between  the  two, 
compensating  for  the  strains  of  renunciation  involved 
in  membership  in  the  ideal  realm  by  pleasureable  ex- 
cursions into  the  delights  of  the  actual. 

If  we  turn  from  concrete  effects  upon  character  to 
theoretical  issues,  we  single  out  the  discussion  regarding 
freedom  of  will  as  typical  of  the  consequences  that  come 
from  separating  morals  from  human  nature.  Men  are 
wearied  with  bootless  discussion,  and  anxious  to  dis- 
miss it  as  a  metaphysical  subtlety.  But  nevertheless 
it  contains  within  itself  the  most  practical  of  all  moral 
questions,  the  nature  of  freedom  and  the  means  of  its 
achieving.  The  separation  of  morals  from  human 
nature  leads  to  a  separation  of  human  nature  in  its 
moral  aspects  from  the  rest  of  nature,  and  from  ordi- 
nary social  habits  and  endeavors  which  are  found  in 
business,  civic  life,  the  run  of  companionships  and  rec- 
reations. These  things  are  thought  of  at  most  as  places 
where  moral  notions  need  to  be  applied,  not  as  places 
where  moral  ideas  are  to  be  studied  and  moral  energies 
generated.  In  short,  the  severance  of  morals  from 
human  nature  ends  by  driving  morals  inwards  from  the 
public  open  out-of-doors  air  and  light  of  day  into  the 


obscurities  and  privacies  of  an  inner  life.  The  signifi- 
cance of  the  traditional  discussion  of  free  will  is  that 
it  reflects  precisely  a  separation  of  moral  activity  from 
nature  and  the  public  life  of  men. 

One  has  to  turn  from  moral  theories  to  the  general 
human  struggle  for  political,  economic  and  religious 
liberty,  for  freedom  of  thought,  speech,  assemblage  and 
creed,  to  find  significant  reality  in  the  conception  of 
freedom  of  will.  Then  one  finds  himself  out  of  the 
stiflingly  close  atmosphere  of  an  inner  consciousness  and 
in  the  open-air  world.  The  cost  of  confining  moral 
freedom  to  an  inner  region  is  the  almost  complete  sev- 
erance of  ethics  from  politics  and  economics.  The  for- 
mer is  regarded  as  summed  up  in  edifying  exhortations, 
and  the  latter  as  connected  with  arts  of  expediency 
separated  from  larger  issues  of  good. 

In  short,  there  are  two  schools  of  social  reform.  One 
bases  itself  upon  the  notion  of  a  morality  which  springs 
from  an  inner  freedom,  something  mysteriously  cooped 
up  within  personality.  It  asserts  that  the  only  way 
to  change  institutions  is  for  men  to  purify  their  own 
hearts,  and  that  when  this  has  been  accomplished, 
change  of  institutions  will  follow  of  itself.  The  other 
school  denies  the  existence  of  any  such  inner  power,  and 
in  so  doing  conceives  that  it  has  denied  all  moral  free- 
dom. It  says  that  men  are  made  what  they  are  by  the 
forces  of  the  environment,  that  human  nature  is  purely 
malleable,  and  that  till  institutions  are  changed,  nothing 
can  be  done.  Clearly  this  leaves  the  outcome  as  hope- 
less as  does  an  appeal  to  an  inner  rectitude  and  benevo- 


10  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

lence.  For  it  provides  no  leverage  for  change  of  en- 
vironment. It  throws  us  back  upon  accident,  usually 
disguised  as  a  necessary  law  of  history  or  evolution,  and 
trusts  to  some  violent  change,  symbolized  by  civil  war, 
to  usher  in  an  abrupt  millennium.  There  is  an  alterna^ 
tive  to  being  penned  in  between  these  two  theories.  We 
can  recognize  that  all  conduct  is  interaction  between  ele- 
ments of  human  nature  and  the  environment,  natural 
and  social.  Then  we  shall  see  that  progress  proceeds 
in  two  ways,  and  that  freedom  is  found  in  that  kind  of 
interaction  which  maintains  an  environment  in  which 
human  desire  and  choice  count  for  something.  There 
are  in  truth  forces  in  man  as  well  as  without  him. 
While  they  are  infinitely  frail  in  comparison  with  ex- 
terior forces,  yet  they  may  have  the  support  of  a  fore- 
seeing and  contriving  intelligence.  When  we  look  at  the 
problem  as  one  of  an  adjustment  to  be  intelligently 
attained,  the  issue  shifts  from  within  personality  to  an 
engineering  issue,  the  establishment  of  arts  of  education 
and  social  guidance. 

The  idea  persists  that  there  is  something  materialistic 
about  natural  science  and  that  morals  are  degraded  by 
having  anything  seriously  to  do  with  material  things. 
If  a  sect  should  arise  proclaiming  that  men  ought  to 
purify  their  lungs  completely  before  they  ever  drew 
a  breath  it  ought  to  win  many  adherents  from  professed 
moralists.  For  the  neglect  of  sciences  that  deal  spe- 
cifically with  facts  of  the  natural  and  social  environ- 
ment leads  to  a  side-tracking  of  moral  forces  into  an 
unreal  privacy  of  an  unreal  self.  It  is  impossible  to 


INTRODUCTION  11 

say  how  much  of  the  remediable  suffering  of  the  world 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  physical  science  is  looked  upon 
as  merely  physical.  It  is  impossible  to  say  how  much 
of  the  unnecessary  slavery  of  the  world  is  due  to  the 
conception  that  moral  issues  can  be  settled  within  con- 
science or  human  sentiment  apart  from  consistent 
study  of  facts  and  application  of  specific  knowledge 
in  industry,  law  and  politics.  Outside  of  manu- 
facturing and  transportation,  science  gets  its  chance 
in  war.  These  facts  perpetuate  war  and  the  hardest, 
most  brutal  side  of  modern  industry.  Each  sign  of 
disregard  for  the  moral  potentialities  of  physical 
science  drafts  the  conscience  of  mankind  away  from 
concern  with  the  interactions  of  man  and  nature  which 
must  be  mastered  if  freedom  is  to  be  a  reality.  It  di- 
verts intelligence  to  anxious  preoccupation  with  the  un- 
realities of  a  purely  inner  life,  or  strengthens  reliance 
upon  outbursts  of  sentimental  affection.  The  masses 
swarm  to  the  occult  for  assistance.  The  cultivated 
smile  contemptuously.  They  might  smile,  as  the  say- 
ing goes,  out  of  the  other  side  of  their  mouths  if  they 
realized  how  recourse  to  the  occult  exhibits  the  prac- 
tical logic  of  their  own  beliefs.  For  both  rest  upon  a 
separation  of  moral  ideas  and  feelings  from  knowable 
facts  of  life,  man  and  the  world. 

It  is  not  pretended  that  a  moral  theory  based  upon 
realities  of  human  nature  and  a  study  of  the  specific 
connections  of  these  realities  with  those  of  physical 
science  would  do  away  with  moral  struggle  and  defeat. 
It  would  not  make  the  moral  life  as  simple  a  matter  as 


12     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

wending  one's  way  along  a  well— lighted  boulevard.  All 
action  is  an  invasion  of  the  future,  of  the  unknown. 
Conflict  and  uncertainty  are  ultimate  traits.  But 
morals  based  upon  concern  with  facts  and .  deriving 
guidance  from  knowledge  of  them  would  at  least  locate 
the  points  of  effective  endeavor  and  would  focus  avail- 
able resources  upon  them.  It  would  put  an  end  to  the 
impossible  attempt  to  live  in  two  unrelated  worlds.  It 
would  destroy  fixed  distinction  between  the  human 
and  the  physical,  as  well  as  that  between  the  moral  and 
the  industrial  and  political.  A  morals  based  on  study 
of  human  nature  instead  of  upon  disregard  for  it 
would  find  the  facts  of  man  continuous  with  those  of 
the  rest  of  nature  and  would  thereby  ally  ethics  with 
physics  and  biology.  It  would  find  the  nature  and 
activities  of  one  person  coterminous  with  those  of  other 
human  beings,  and  therefore  link  ethics  with  the  study 
of  history,  sociology,  law  and  economics. 

Such  a  morals  would  not  automatically  solve  moral 
problems,  nor  resolve  perplexities.  But  it  would  enable 
us  to  state  problems  in  such  forms  that  action  could 
be  courageously  and  intelligently  directed  to  their  solu- 
tion. It  would  not  assure  us  against  failure,  but  it 
would  render  failure  a  source  of  instruction.  It  would 
not  protect  us  against  the  future  emergence  of  equally 
serious  moral  difficulties,  but  it  would  enable  us  to  ap- 
proach the  always  recurring  troubles  with  a  fund  of 
growing  knowledge  which  would  add  significant  value? 
to  our  conduct  even  when  we  overtly  failed — as  we 
should  continue  to  do.  Until  the  integrity  of  morals 


INTRODUCTION  13 

with  human  nature  and  of  both  with  the  environment  is 
recognized,  we  shall  be  deprived  of  the  aid  of  past 
experience  to  cope  with  the  most  acute  and  deep  prob- 
lems of  life.  Accurate  and  extensive  knowledge  will 
continue  to  operate  only  in  dealing  with  purely  tech- 
nical problems.  The  intelligent  acknowledgment  of 
the  continuity  of  nature,  man  and  society  will  alone 
secure  a  growth  of  morals  which  will  be  serious  without 
being  fanatical,  aspiring  without  sentimentality, 
adapted  to  reality  without  conventionality,  sensible 
without  taking  the  form  of  calculation  of  profits,  ideal- 
istic without  being  romantic. 


PART  ONE 

THE    PLACE    OF    HABIT    IN    CONDUCT 


HABITS  may  be  profitably  compared  to  physiological 
functions,  like  breathing,  digesting.  The  latter  are,  to 
be  sure,  involuntary,  while  habits  are  acquired.  But 
important  as  is  this  difference  for  many  purposes  it 
should  not  conceal  the  fact  that  habits  are  like  func- 
tions in  many  respects,  and  especially  in  requiring  the 
cooperation  of  organism  and  environment.  Breathing 
is  an  affair  of  the  air  as  truly  as  of  the  lungs ;  digesting 
an  affair  of  food  as  truly  as  of  tissues  of  stomach. 
Seeing  involves  light  just  as  certainly  as  it  does  the 
eye  and  optic  nerve.  Walking  implicates  the  ground 
as  well  as  the  legs ;  speech  demands  physical  air  and 
human  companionship  and  audience  as  well  as  vocal 
organs.  We  may  shift  from  the  biological  to  the  math- 
ematical use  of  the  word  function,  and  say  that  natural 
operations  like  breathing  and  digesting,  acquired  ones 
like  speech  and  honesty,  are  functions  of  the  surround- 
ings as  truly  as  of  a  person.  They  are  things  done  by 
the  environment  by  means  of  organic  structures  or 
acquired  dispositions.  The  same  air  that  under  cer- 
tain conditions  ruffles  the  pool  or  wrecks  buildings, 

14 


HABITS  AS  SOCIAL  FUNCTIONS  15 

under  other  conditions  purifies  the  blood  and  conveys 
thought.  The  outcome  depends  upon  what  air  acts 
upon.  The  social  environment  acts  through  native  im- 
pulses and  speech  and  moral  habitudes  manifest  them- 
selves. There  are  specific  good  reasons  for  the  usual 
attribution  of  acts  to  the  person  from  whom  they  im- 
mediately proceed.  But  to  convert  this  special  ref- 
erence into  a  belief  of  exclusive  ownership  is  as  mis- 
leading as  to  suppose  that  breathing  and  digesting  are 
complete  within  the  human  body.  To  get  a  rational 
basis  for  moral  discussion  we  must  begin  with  recogniz- 
ing that  functions  and  habits  are  ways  of  using  and 
incorporating  the  environment  in  which  the  latter  has 
its  say  as  surely  as  the  former. 

We  may  borrow  words  from  a  context  less  technical 
than  that  of  biology,  and  convey  the  same  idea  by  say- 
ing that  habits  are  arts.  They  involve  skill  of  sensory 
and  motor  organs,  cunning  or  craft,  and  objective 
materials.  They  assimilate  objective  energies,  and 
eventuate  in  command  of  environment.  They  require 
order,  discipline,  and  manifest  technique.  They  have 
a  beginning,  middle  and  end.  Each  stage  marks  prog- 
ress in  dealing  with  materials  and  tools,  advance  in  con- 
verting material  to  active  use.  We  should  laugh  at  any 
one  who  said  that  he  was  master  of  stone  working,  but 
that  the  art  was  cooped  up  within  himself  and  in  no  wise 
dependent  upon  support  from  objects  and  assistance 
from  tools. 

In  morals  we  are  however  quite  accustomed  to  such 
a  fatuity.  Moral  dispositions  are  thought  of  as  be- 


1 


16  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

longing  exclusively  to  a  self.  The  self  is  thereby  isolated 
from  natural  and  social  surroundings.  A  whole  school 
of  morals  flourishes  upon  capital  drawn  from  restrict- 
ing morals  to  character  and  then  separating  character 
from  conduct,  motives  from  actual  deeds.  Recognition 
of  the  analogy  of  moral  action  with  functions  and  arts 
uproots  the  causes  which  have  made  morals  subjective 
and  "  individualistic."  It  brings  morals  to  earth,  and 
if  they  still  aspire  to  heaven  it  is  to  the  heavens  of  the 
earth,  and  not  to  another  world.  Honesty,  chastity, 
malice,  peevishness,  courage,  triviality,  industry,  irre- 
sponsibility are  not  private  possessions  of  a  person. 
They  are  working  adaptations  of  personal  capacities 
with  environing  forces.  All  virtues  and  vices,  are  jiabits 
which  incorporate  objective  forces.  They  are^inter- 
actions  of  elements  contributed  by  the  make-up  of  an 
"'tb  figments  supplied  by  the  out-door^wbrl3. 


They  can  be  studieoaT  ob  j  ectively^as  physiological 
functions,  and  they  can  be  modified  by  change  of  either 
personal  or  social  elements. 

If  an  individual  were  alone  in  the  world,  he  would 
form  his  habits  (assuming  the  impossible,  namely,  that 
he  would  be  able  to  form  them)  in  a  moral  vacuum. 
They  would  belong  to  him  alone,  or  to  him  only  in  ref- 
erence to  physical  forces.  Responsibility  and  virtue 
would  be  his  alone.  But  since  habits  involve  the  sup- 
port of  environing  conditions,  a  society  or  some  specific 
group  of  fellow-men,  is  always  accessory  before  and 
after  the  fact.  Some  activity  proceeds  from  a  man  ; 
then  it  sets  up  reactions  in  the  surroundings.  Others 


HABITS  AS  SOCIAL  FUNCTIONS  17 

approve,  disapprove,  protest,  encourage,  share  and  re- 
sist. Even  letting  a  man  alone  is  a  definite  response. 
Envy,  admiration  and  imitation  are  complicities.  Neu- 
trality is  non-existent.  Conduct  is  always  shared;  this 
is  the  difference  between  it  and  a  physiological  process. 
It  is  not  an  ethical  "  ou^ht "  that  conduct  should  be 
social.  It  is  social,  whether  bad  or  good. 

Washing  one'sTiands  of  the  guilt  of  others  is  a  way 
of  sharing  guilt  so  far  as  it  encourages  in  others  a 
vicious  way  of  action.  Non-resistance  to  evil  which 
takes  the  form  of  paying  no  attention  to  it  is  a  way 
of  promoting  it.  The  desire  of  an  individual  to  keep 
his  own  conscience  stainless  by  standing  aloof  from 
badness  may  be  a  sure  means  of  causing  evil  and  thus 
of  creating  personal  responsibility  for  it.  Yet  there  are 
circumstances  in  which  passive  resistance  may  be  the 
most  effective  form  of  nullification  of  wrong  action, 
or  in  which  heaping  coals  of  fire  on  the  evil-doer  may 
be  the  most  effective  way  of  transforming  conduct.  To 
sentimentalize  over  a  criminal — to  "  forgive  "  because 
of  a  glow  of  feeling — is  to  incur  liability  for  production 
of  criminals.  But  to  suppose  that  infliction  of  retibu- 
tive  suffering  suffices,  without  reference  to  concrete 
consequences,  is  to  leave  untouched  old  causes  of  crim- 
inality and  to  create  new  ones  by  fostering  revenge  and 
brutality.  The  abstract  theory  of  justice  which  de- 
mands the  "  vindication "  of  law  irrespective  of  in- 
struction and  reform  of  the  wrong-doer  is  as  much  a 
refusal  to  recognize  responsibility  as  is  the  sentimental 
gush  which  makes  a  suffering  victim  out  of  a  criminal. 


18  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

Courses  of  action  which  put  the  blame  exclusively 
on  a  person  as  if  his  evil  will  were  the  sole  cause  of 
wrong-doing  and  those  which  condone  offense  on  ac- 
count of  the  share  of  social  conditions  in  producing 
bad  disposition,  are  equally  ways  of  making  an  unreal 
separation  of  man  from  his  surroundings,  mind  from 
the  world.  Causes  for  an  act  always  exist,  but  causes 
are  not  excuses.  Questions  of  causation  are  physical, 
not  moral  except  when  they  concern  future  conse- 
quences. It  is  as  causes  of  future  actions  that  excuses 
and  accusations  alike  must  be  considered.  At  present 
we  give  way  to  resentful  passion,  and  then  "  rational- 
ize "  our  surrender  by  calling  it  a  vindication  of  justice. 
Our  entire  tradition  regarding  punitive  justice  tends 
to  prevent  recognition  of  social  partnership  in  produc- 
ing crime;  it  falls  in  with  a  belief  in  metaphysical 
free-will.  By  killing  an  evil-doer  or  shutting  him  up 
behind  stone  walls,  we  are  enabled  to  forget  both  him. 
and  our  part  in  creating  him.  Society  excuses  itself 
by  laying  the  blame  on  the  criminal ;  he  retorts  by  put- 
ting the  blame  on  bad  early  surroundings,  the  tempta- 
tions of  others,  lack  of  opportunities,  and  the  persecu- 
tions of  officers  of  the  law.  Both  are  right,  except  in 
the  wholesale  character  of  their  recriminations.  But 
the  effect  on  both  sides  is  to  throw  the  whole  matter 
back  into  antecedent  causation,  a  method  which  refuses 
to  bring  the  matter  to  truly  moral  judgment.  For 
morals  has  to  do  with  acts  still  within  our  control,  acts 
still  to  be  performed.  No  amount  of  guilt  on  the  part 


HABITS  AS  SOCIAL  FUNCTIONS  19 

of  the  evil-doer  absolves  us  from  responsibility  for  the 
consequences  upon  him  and  others  of  our  way  of  treat- 
ing him,  or  from  our  continuing  responsibility  for  the 
conditions  under  which  persons  develop  perverse  habits. 
We  need  to  discriminate  between  the  physical  and  the 
moral  question.     The  former  concerns  what  has  hap- 
pened, and  how  it  happened.    To  consider  this  question 
is  indispensable  to  morals.    Without  an  answer  to  it  we 
cannot  tell  what  forces  are  at  work  nor  how  to  direct 
our  actions  so   as  to   improve  conditions.      Until  we 
know  the  conditions  which  have  helped  form  the  char- 
acters we  approve  and  disapprove,  our  efforts  to  create 
the  one  and  do  away  with  the  other  will  be  blind  and 
halting.    But  the  moral  issue  concerns  the  future.    It  is 
prospective.     To  content  ourselves  with  pronouncing 
judgments  of  merit  and  demerit  without  reference  to 
the  fact  that  our  judgments  are  themselves  facts  which 
have  consequences  and  that  their  value  depends  upon 
their  consequences,  is  complacently  to  dodge  the  moral 
issue,  perhaps  even  to  indulge  ourselves  in  pleasurable 
passion  just  as  the  person  we  condemn  once  indulged 
himself.     The  moral  problem  is  that  of  modifying  the 
factors  which  now  influence  future  results.     To  change 
the  working  character  or  will  of  another  we  have  to 
alter  objective  conditions  which  enter  into  his  habits. 
Our  own  schemes  of  judgment,  of  assigning  blame  and 
praise,  of  awarding  punishment  and  honor,  are  part 
of  these  conditions. 

In  practical  life,  there  are  many  recognitions  of  the 


20     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

part  played  by  social  factors  in  generating  personal 
traits.  One  of  them  is  our  habit  of  making  social 
classifications.  We  attribute  distinctive  characteristics 
to  rich  and  poor,  slum-dweller  and  captain  of  industry, 
rustic  and  suburbanite,  officials,  politicians,  professors, 
to  members  of  races,  sets  and  parties.  These  judg- 
ments are  usually  too  coarse  to  be  of  much  use.  But 
they  show  our  practical  awareness  that  personal  traits 
are  functions  of  social  situations.  When  we  generalize 
this  perception  and  act  upon  it  intelligently  we  are 
committed  by  it  to  recognize  that  we  change  character 
from  worse  to  better  only  by  changing  conditions — 
among  which,  once  more,  are  our  own  ways  of  dealing 
with  the  one  we  judge.  We  cannot  change  habit  di- 
rectly: that  notion  is  magic.  But  we  can  change  it 
indirectly  by  modifying  conditions,  by  an  intelligent 
selecting  and  weighting  of  the  objects  which  engage 
attention  and  which  influence  the  fulfilment  of  desires. 

A  savage  can  travel  after  a  fashion  in  a  jungle. 
Civilized  activity  is  too  complex  to  be  carried  on  with- 
out smoothed  roads.  It  requires  signals  and  junction 
points;  traffic  authorities  and  means  of  easy  and  rapid 
transportation.  It  demands  a  congenial,  antecedently 
prepared  environment.  Without  it,  civilization  would 
relapse  into  barbarism  in  spite  of  the  best  of  subjective 
intention  and  internal  good  disposition.  The  eternal 
dignity  of  labor  and  art  lies  in  their  effecting  that  per- 
manent reshaping  of  environment  which  is  the  substan- 
tial foundation  of  future  security  and  progress.  In- 


HABITS  AS  SOCIAL  FUNCTIONS  21 

dividuals  flourish  and  wither  away  like  the  grass  of  the 
fields.  But  the  fruits  of  their  work  endure  and  make 
possible  the  development  of  further  activities  having 
fuller  significance.  It  is  of  grace  not  of  ourselves  that 
we  lead  civilized  lives.  There  is  sound  sense  in  the  old 
pagan  notion  thaj  gratitude  is  the  root  of  all  virtue^ 
Loyalty  to  whatever  in  the  established  environment 
makes  a  life  of  excellence  possible  is  the  beginning  of 
all  progress.  The  best  we  can  accomplish  for  posterity 
is  to  transmit  unimpaired  and  with  some  increment  of 
meaning  the  environment  that  makes  it  possible  to 
maintain  the  habits  of  decent  and  refined~lileT Our 


individual  habits  are  limes  m  forming  the  endless  chain 
of  humanity.  Their  significance  depends  upon  the  en- 
vironment inherited  from  our  forerunners,  and  it  is 
enhanced  as  we  foresee  the  fruits  of  our  labors  in  the 
world  in  which  our  successors  live. 

For  however  much  has  been  done,  there  always  re- 
mains more  to  do.  We  can  retain  and  transmit  our  own 
heritage  only  by  constant  remaking  of  our  own  environ- 
ment. Piety  to  the  past  is  not  for  its  own  sake  nor  for 
the  sake  of  the  past,  but  for  the  sake  of  a  present  so 
secure  and  enriched  that  it  will  create  a  yet  better 
future.  Individuals  with  their  exhortations,  their 
preachings  and  scoldings,  their  inner  aspirations  and 
sentiments  have  disappeared,  but  their  habits  endure, 
because  these  habits  incorporate  objective  conditions  in 
themselves.  So  will  it  be  with  our  activities.  We  may 
desire  abolition  of  war,  industrial  justice,  greater 


22     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

equality  of  opportunity  for  all.  But  no  amount  of 
preaching  good  will  or  the  golden  rule  or  cultivation 
of  sentiments  of  love  and  equity  will  accomplish  the 
results.  There  must^  be  change  in  objective  arrange- 
ments and  mstitutiQQS.  We  muslTwork  oTTthe  TmvTron- 
ment  not  merely  on  the  hearts  of  men.  To  think  other- 
wise is  to  suppose  that  flowers  can  be  raised  in  a  desert 
or  motor  cars  run  in  a  jungle.  Both  things  can  happen 
and  without  a  miracle.  But  only  by  first  changing  the 
jungle  and  desert. 

Yet  the  distinctively  personal  or  subjective  factors  in 
habit  count.  Taste  for  flowers  may  be  the  initial  step 
in  building  reservoirs  and  irrigation  canals.  The  stim- 
ulation of  desire  and  effort  is  one  preliminary  in  the 
change  of  surroundings.  While  personal  exhortation, 
advice  and  instruction  is  a  feeble  stimulus  compared 
with  that  which  steadily  proceeds  from  the  impersonal 
forces  and  depersonalized  habitudes  of  the  environment, 
yet  they  may  start  the  latter  going.  Taste,  ap- 
preciation and  effort  always  spring  from  some  accom- 
plished objective  situation.  They  have  objective 
support;  they  represent  the  liberation  of  something 
formerly  accomplished  so  that  it  is  useful  in  further 
operation.  A  genuine  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of 
flowers  is  not  generated  within  a  self-enclosed  conscious- 
ness. It  reflects  a  world  in  which  beautiful  flowers  have 
already  grown  and  been  enjoyed.  Taste  and  desire 
represent  a  prior  objective  fact  recurring  in  action  to 
secure  perpetuation  and  extension.  Desire  for  flowers 
comes  after  actual  enjoyment  of  flowers.  But  it  comes 


HABITS  AS  SOCIAL  FUNCTIONS  23 

before  the  work  that  makes  the  desert  blossom,  it  comes 
before  cultivation  of  plants.  Everyjdeal  is  preceded  by 
anactuality  iJbut  the  ideal  is  more  than  a  repetition 
in  inner  image  of  the  actual.  ^Jt^r^je^is^LsecjireiLand 
wider  and_JulleiL_£arjn_^iniL_g^^  pre- 

viously experienced  in  a  precarious,  accidental,  fleeting 

wayT" 


n 


It  is  a  significant  fact  that  in  order  to  appreciate 
the  peculiar  place  of  habit  in  activity  we  have  to  be- 
take ourselves  to  bad  habits,  foolish  idling,  gambling, 
addiction  to  liquor  and  drugs.  When  we  think  of  such 
its,  the  union  of  habit  with  desire  and  with  pro- 
pulsive  power  is  forced  upon  us.  When  we  think  of 
habits  in  terms  of  walking,  playing  a  musical  instru- 
ment, typewriting,  we  are  much  given  to  thinking  of 
habits  as  technical  abilities  existing  apart  from  our 
likings  and  as  lacking  in  urgent  impulsion.  We  think 
of  them  as  passive  tools  waiting  to  be  called  into  action 
from  without.  A  bad  habit  suggests  an  inherent  tend- 
ency to  action  and  also  a  hold,  command  over  us.  It 
makes  us  do  things  we  are  ashamed  of,  things  which  we 
tell  ourselves  we  prefer  not  to  do.  It  overrides  our 
formal  resolutions,  our  conscious  decisions.  When  we 
are  honest  with  ourselves  we  acknowledge  that  a  habit 
has  this  power  because  it  is  so  intimately  a  part  of  our- 
selves. It  has  a  hold  upon  us  because  we  are  the  habit. 

Our  self-love,  our  refusal  to  face  facts,  combined 
perhaps  with  a  sense  of  a  possible  better  although 
unrealized  self,  leads  us  to  eject  the  habit  from  the 
thought  of  ourselves  and  conceive  it  as  an  evil  power 
which  has  somehow  overcome  us.  We  feed  our  conceit 
by  recalling  that  the  habit  was  not  deliberately  formed ; 
we  never  intended  to  become  idlers  or  gamblers  or  roues. 

M 


HABITS  AND  WILL  25 

And  how  can  anything  be  deeply  ourselves  which  de- 
veloped accidentally,  without  set  intention?  These 
traits  of  a  bad  habit  are  precisely  the  things  which  are 
most  instructive  about  all  habits  and  about  ourselves. 
They  teach  us  that  all  habits  are  affections,  that  all 
have  projectile  power,  and  that  f(  predisposition 
formed  by  a  number  of  specific  acts  is  an  immensely 
more  intimate  and  fundamental  part  of  ourselves  than 
are  vague,  general,  conscious  phojces.  All  habits  are 
demands  for  certain  kinds  of  activity;  and  they  con- 
stitute the  self.  In  any  intelligible  sense  of  the  word 
will,  they  are  will.  They  form  our  effective  desires  anc 
they  furnish  us  with  our  working  capacities.  They 
rule  our  thoughts,  determining  which  shall  appear  and 
be  strong  and  which  shall  pass  from  light  into 
obscurity. 

We  may  think  of  habits  as  means,  waiting,  like  tools 
in  a  box,  to  be  used  by  conscious  resolve.  But  they 
are  something  more  than  that.  They  are  active  means, 
means  that  project  themselves,  energetic  and  dominat- 
ing ways  of  acting.  We  need  to  distinguish  between 
materials,  tools  and  means  proper.  Nails  and  boards 
are  not  strictly  speaking  means  of  a  box.  They  are 
only  materials  for  making  it.  Even  the  saw  and  ham- 
mer are  means  only  when  they  are  employed  in  some 
actual  making.  Otherwise  they  are  tools,  or  potential 
means.  They  are  actual  means  only  when  brought  in 
conjunction  with  eye,  arm  and  hand  in  some  specific 
operation.  And  eye,  arm  and  hand  are,  correspond- 
ingly, means  proper  only  when  they  are  in  active  opera- 


26     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

tion.  And  whenever  they  are  in  action  they  a**e  coop- 
erating with  external  materials  and  energies.  Without 
support  from  beyond  themselves  the  eye  stares  blankly 
and  the  hand  moves  fumblingly.  They  are  means  only 
when  they  enter  into  organization  with  things  which 
independently  accomplish  definite  results.  These  organ- 
izations are  habits. 

This  fact  cuts  two  ways.  Except  in  a  contingent 
sense,  with  an  "  if,"  neither  external  materials  nor  bod- 
ily and  mental  organs  are  in  themselves  means.  They 
have  to  be  employed  in  coordinated  conjunction  with 
one  another  to  be  actual  means,  or  habits.  This  state- 
ment may  seem  like  the  formulation  in  technical  lan- 
guage of  a  common-place.  But  belief  in  magic  has 
played  a  large  part  in  human  history.  And  the  es- 
sence of  all  hocus-pocus  is  the  supposition  that  results 
can  be  accomplished  without  the  joint  adaptation  to 
each  other  of  human  powers  and  physical  conditions. 
A  desire  for  rain  may  induce  men  to  wave  willow 
branches  and  to  sprinkle  water.  The  reaction  is  nat- 
ural and  innocent.  But  men  then  go  on  to  believe  that 
their  act  has  immediate  power  to  bring  rain  without 
the  cooperation  of  intermediate  conditions  of  nature. 
This  is  magic ;  while  it  may  be  natural  or  spontaneous, 
it  is  not  innocent.  It  obstructs  intelligent  study  of 
operative  conditions  and  wastes  human  desire  and  effort 
in  futilities. 

Belief  in  magic  did  not  cease  when  the  coarser  forms 
of  superstitious  practice  ceased.  The  principle  of 
magic  is  found  whenever  it  is  hoped  to  get  results 


HABITS  AND  WILL  27 

without  intelligent  control  of  means;  and  also  when  it 
is  supposed  that  means  can  exist  and  yet  remain  inert 
and  inoperative.  In  morals  and  politics  such  expecta- 
tions still  prevail,  and  in  so  far  the  most  important 
phases  of  human  action  are  still  affected  by  magic.  We 
think  that  by  feeling  strongly  enough  about  something, 
by  wishing  hard  enough,  we  can  get  a  desirable  result, 
such  as  virtuous  execution  of  a  good  resolve,  or  peace 
among  nations,  or  good  will  in  industry.  We  slur  over 
the  necessity  of  the  cooperative  action  of  objective 
conditions,  and  the  fact  that  this  cooperation  is  as- 
sured only  by  persistent  and  close  study.  Or,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  fancy  we  can  get  these  results  by 
external  machinery,  by  tools  or  potential  means,  with- 
out a  corresponding  functioning  of  human  desires  and 
capacities.  Often  times  these  two  false  and  contradic- 
tory beliefs  are  combined  in  the  same  person.  The  man 
who  feels  that  his  virtues  are  his  own  personal  accom- 
plishments is  likely  to  be  also  the  one  who  thinks  that 
by  passing  laws  he  can  throw  the  fear  of  God  into 
others  and  make  them  virtuous  by  edict  and  prohib- 
itory mandate. 

Recently  a  friend  remarked  to  me  that  there  was  one 
superstition  current  among  even  cultivated  persons. 
They  suppose  that  if  one  is  told  what  to  do,  if  the 
right  end  is  pointed  to  them,  all  that  is  required  in 
order  to  bring  about  the  right  act  is  will  or  wish  on 
the  part  of  the  one  who  is  to  act.  He  used  as  an  illus- 
tration the  matter  of  physical  posture ;  the  assumption 
is  that  if  a  man  is  told  to  stand  up  straight,  all  that 


28  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

is  further  needed  is  wish  and  effort  on  his  part,  and 
the  deed  is  done.  He  pointed  out  that  this  belief  is  on 
a  par  with  primitive  magic  in  its  neglect  of  attention 
to  the  means  which  are  involved  in  reaching  an  end. 
And  he  went  on  to  say  that  the  prevalence  of  this  be- 
lief, starting  with  false  notions  about  the  control  of 
the  body  and  extending  to  control  of  mind  and  char- 
acter, is  the  greatest  bar  to  intelligent  social  progress. 
It  bars  the  way  because  it  makes  us  neglect  intelligent 
inquiry  to  discover  the  means  which  will  produce  a 
desired  result,  and  intelligent  invention  to  procure  the 
means.  In  short,  it  leaves  out  the  importance  of  intelli- 
gently controlled  habit. 

We  may  cite  his  illustration  of  the  real  nature  of  a 
physical  aim  or  order  and  its  execution  in  its  contrast 
with  the  current  false  notion.*  A  man  who  has  a  bad 
habitual  posture  tells  himself,  or  is  told,  to  stand  up 
straight.  If  he  is  interested  and  responds,  he  braces 
himself,  goes  through  certain  movements,  and  it  is  as- 
sumed that  the  desired  result  is  substantially  attained; 
and  that  the  position  is  retained  at  least  as  long  as 
the  man  keeps  the  idea  or  order  in  his  mind.  Consider 
the  assumptions  which  are  here  made.  It  is  implied 
that  the  means  or  effective  conditions  of  the  reali- 
zation of  a  purpose  exist  independently  of  established 
habit  and  even  that  they  may  be  set  in  motion  in  op- 
position to  habit.  It  is  assumed  that  means  are  there, 
so  that  the  failure  to  stand  erect  is  wholly  a  matter  of 
failure  of  purpose  and  desire.  It  needs  paralysis  or 

•  I  refer  to  Alexander,  "  Man's  Supreme  Inheritance." 


HABITS  AND  WILL  29 

a  broken  leg  or  some  other  equally  gross  phenomenon 
to  make  us  appreciate  the  importance  of  objective 
conditions. 

Now  in  fact  a  man  who  can  stand  properly  does  so, 
and  only  a  man  who  can,  does.  In  the  former  case, 
fiats  of  will  are  unnecessary,  and  in  the  latter  useless. 
A  man  who  does  not  stand  properly  forms  a  habit  of 
standing  improperly,  a  positive,  forceful  habit.  The 
common  implication  that  his  mistake  is  merely  nega- 
tive, that  he  is  simply  failing  to  do  the  right  thing,  and 
that  the  failure  can  be  made  good  by  an  order  of  will 
is  absurd.  One  might  as  well  suppose  that  the  man 
who  is  a  slave  of  whiskey-drinking  is  merely  one  who 
fails  to  drink  water.  Conditions  have  been  formed  for 
producing  a  bad  result,  and  the  bad  result  will  occur 
as  long  as  those  conditions  exist.  They  can  no  more 
be  dismissed  by  a  direct  effort  of  will  than  the  condi- 
tions which  create  drought  can  be  dispelled  by  whistling 
for  wind.  It  is  as  reasonable  to  expect  a  fire  to  go  out 
when  it  is  ordered  to  stop  burning  as  to  suppose  that 
a  man  can  stand  straight  in  consequence  of  a  direct 
action  of  thought  and  desire.  The  fire  can  be  put  out 
only  by  changing  objective  conditions;  it  is  the  same 
with  rectification  of  bad  posture. 

Of  course  something  happens  when  a  man  acts  upon 
his  idea  of  standing  straight.  For  a  little  while,  he 
stands  differently,  but  only  a  different  kind  of  badly. 
He  then  takes  the  unaccustomed  feeling  which  accom- 
panies his  unusual  stand  as  evidence  that  he  is  now 
standing  right.  But  there  are  many  ways  of  standing 


30  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

badly,  and  he  has  simply  shifted  his  usual  way  to  a 
compensatory  bad  way  at  some  opposite  extreme. 
When  we  realize  this  fact,  we  are  likely  to  suppose  that 
it  exists  because  control  of  the  body  is  physical  and 
hence  is  external  to  mind  and  will.  Transfer  the  com- 
mand inside  character  and  mind,  and  it  is  fancied  that 
an  idea  of  an  end  and  the  desire  to  realize  it  will  take 
immediate  effect.  After  we  get  to  the  point  of  recog- 
nizing that_habits  must  intervene  between  wish  and 
execution  in  the  case  of  bodily  acts,  we  still  cherish 
the  illusion  that  they  can  be  dispensed  with  in  the  case 
of  mental  and  moral  acts.  Thus  the  net  result  is  to 
make  us  sharpen  the  distinction  between  non-moral  and 
moral  activities,  and  to  lead  us  to  confine  the  latter 
strictly  within  a  private,  immaterial  realm.  But  in 
fact,  formation  of  ideas  as_wgljL_a3^  their  execution  de- 
pends upon  habit.  //  we  could  form  a  correct  idea 
without  a  correct  habit,  then  possibly  we  could  carry 
it  out  irrespective  of  habit.  But  a  wish  gets  definite 
form  only  in  connection  with  an  idea,  and  an  idea  gets 
shape  and  consistency  only  when  it  has  a  habit  back  of 
it.  Only  when  a  man  can  already  perform  an  act  of 
standing  straight  does  he  know  what  it  is  like  to  have 
a  right  posture  and  only  then  can  he  summon  the 
idea  required  for  proper  execution.  The  act  must  come 
before  the  thought,  and  a  habit  before  an  ability  to 
evoke  the  thought  at  will.  Ordinary  psychology  re- 
verses the  actual  state  of  affairs. 

Ideas,  thoughts  of  ends,  are  not  spontaneously  gen- 
erated.    There  is  no  immaculate  conception  of  mean- 


HABITS  AND  WILL  31 

ings  or  purposes.  Reason  pure  of  all  influence  from 
prior  habit  is  a  fiction.  But  pure  sensations  out  of 
which  ideas  can  be  framed  apart  from  habit  are  equally 
fictitious.  The  sensations  and  ideas  which  are  the 
"  stuff  "of  thought  and  purpose  are  alike  affected  by 
habits  manifested  in  the  acts  which  give  rise  to  sen- 
sations and  meanings.  The  dependence  of  thought,  or 
the  more  intellectual  factor  in  our  conceptions,  upon 
prior  experience  is  usually  admitted.  But  those  who 
attack  the  notion  of  thought  pure  from  the  influence 
of  experience,  usually  identify  experience  with  sensa- 
tions impressed  upon  an  empty  mind.  They  there- 
fore replace  the  theory  of  unmixed  thoughts  with  that  of 
pure  unmixed  sensations  as  the  stuff  of  all  conceptions, 
purposes  and  beliefs.  But  distinct  and  independent 
sensory  qualities,  far  from  being  original  elements,  are 
the  products  of  a  highly  skilled  analysis  which  disposes 
of  immense  technical  scientific  resources.  To  be  able  to 
single  out  a  definitive  sensory  element  in  any  field  is 
evidence  of  a  high  degree  of  previous  training,  that  is, 
of  well-formed  habits.  A  moderate  amount  of  observa- 
tion of  a  child  will  suffice  to  reveal  that  even  such  gross 
discriminations  as  black,  white,  red,  green,  are  the  re- 
sult of  some  years  of  active  dealings  with  things  in  the 
course  of  which  habits  have  been  set  up.  It  is  not  such 
a  simple  matter  to  have  a  clear-cut  sensation.  The 
latter  is  a  sign  of  training,  skill,  habit. 

Admission  that  the  idea  of,  say,  standing  erect  is 
dependent  upon  sensory  materials  is,  therefore  equiva- 
lent to  recognition  that  it  is  dependent  upon  the 


32  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

habitual  attitudes  which  govern  concrete  sensory  ma- 
terials. The  medium  of  habit  filters  all  the  material 
that  reaches  our  perception  and  thought.  The  filter  is 
not,  however,  chemically  pure.  It  is  a  reagent  which 
adds  new  qualities  and  rearranges  what  is  received. 
Our  ideas  truly  depend  upon  experience,  but  so  do  our 
sensations.  And  the  experience  upon  which  they  both 
depend  is  the  operation  of  habits — originally  of  in- 
stincts. Thus  our  purposes  and  commands  regarding 
action  (whether  physical  or  moral)  come  to  us  through 
the  refracting  medium  of  bodily  and  moral  habits.  In- 
ability to  think  aright  is  sufficiently  striking  to  have 
caught  the  attention  of  moralists.  But  a  false  psy- 
chology has  led  them  to  interpret  it  as  due  to  a  neces- 
sary conflict  of  flesh  and  spirit,  not  as  an  indication 
that  our  ideas  are  as  dependent,  to  say  the  least,  upon 
our  habits  as  are  our  acts  upon  our  conscious  thoughts 
and  purposes. 

Only  the  man  who  can  maintain  a  correct  posture 
has  the  stuff  out  of  which  to  form  that  idea  of  standing 
erect  which  can  be  the  starting  point  of  a  right  act. 
Only  the  man  whose  habits  are  already  good  can  know 
what  the  good  is.  Immediate,  seemingly  instinctive, 
feeling  of  the  direction  and  end  of  various  lines  of  be- 
havior is  in  reality  the  feeling  of  habits  working  below 
direct  consciousness.  The  psychology  of  illusions  of 
perception  is  full  of  illustrations  of  the  distortion  in- 
troduced by  habit  into  observation  of  objects.  The 
same  fact  accounts  for  the  intuitive  element  in  judg- 
ments of  action,  an  element  which  is  valuable  or  the 


HABITS  AND  WILL  33 

reverse  in  accord  with  the  quality  of  dominant  habits. 
For,  as  Aristotle  remarked,  the  untutored  moral  per- 
ceptions of  a  good  man  are  usually  trustworthy,  those 
of  a  bad  character,  not.  (But  he  should  have  added 
that  the  influence  of  social  custom  as  well  as  personal 
habit  has  to  be  taken  into  account  in  estimating  who 
is  the  good  man  and  the  good  judge.) 

What  is  true  of  the  dependence  of  execution  of  an 
idea  upon  habit  is  true,  then,  of  the  formation  and 
quality  of  the  idea.  Suppose  that  by  a  happy  chance 
a  right  concrete  idea  or  purpose — concrete,  not  simply 
correct  in  words — has  been  hit  upon:  What  happens 
when  one  with  an  incorrect  habit  tries  to  act  in  accord 
with  it?  Clearly  the  idea  can  be  carried  into  execution 
only  with  a  mechanism  already  there.  If  this  is  de- 
fective or  perverted,  the  best  intention  in  the  world  will 
yield  bad  results.  In  the  case  of  no  other  engine  does 
one  suppose  that  a  defective  machine  will  turn  out  good 
goods  simply  because  it  is  invited  to.  Everywhere  else 
we  recognize  that  the  design  and  structure  of  the  agency 
employed  tell  directly  upon  the  work  done.  Given  a 
bad  habit  and  the  "  will  "  or  mental  direction  to  get  a 
good  result,  and  the  actual  happening  is  a  reverse  or 
looking-glass  manifestation  of  the  usual  fault — a  com- 
pensatory twist  in  the  opposite  direction.  Refusal 
to  recognize  this  fact  only  leads  to  a  separation  of  mind 
from  body,  and  to  supposing  that  mental  or  "  psychi- 
cal "  mechanisms  are  different  in  kind  from  those  of 
bodily  operations  and  independent  of  them.  So  deep 
seated  is  this  notion  that  even  so  "  scientific  "  a  theory 


S4>  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

as  modern  psycho-analysis  thinks  that  mental  habits 
can  be  straightened  out  by  some  kind  of  purely  psychi- 
cal manipulation  without  reference  to  the  distortions 
of  sensation  and  perception  which  are  due  to  bad  bodily 
sets.  The  other  side  of  the  error  is  found  in  the  notion 
of  "  scientific  "  nerve  physiologists  that  it  is  only  neces- 
sary to  locate  a  particular  diseased  cell  or  local  lesion, 
independent  of  the  whole  complex  of  organic  habits,  in 
order  to  rectify  conduct. 

Means  are  means;  they  are  intermediates,  middle 
terms.  To  grasp  this  fact  is  to  have  done  with  the 
ordinary  dualism  of  means  and  ends.  The  "  end  "  is 
merely  a  series  of  acts  viewed  at  a  remote  stage;  and 
a  means  is  merely  the  series  viewed  at  an  earlier  one. 
The  distinction  of  means  and  end  arises  in  surveying 
the  course  of  a  proposed  line  of  action,  a  connected 
series  in  time.  The  "  end  "  is  the  last  act  thought  of ; 
the  means  are  the  acts  to  be  performed  prior  to  it  in 
time.  To  reach  an  end  we  must  take  our  mind  off  from 
it  and  attend  to  the  act  which  is  next  to  be  performed. 
We  must  make  that  the  end.  The  only  exception  to 
this  statement  is  in  cases  where  customary  habit  de- 
termines the  course  of  the  series.  Then  all  that  is 
wanted  is  a  cue  to  set  it  off.  But  when  the  proposed 
,end  involves  any  deviation  from  usual  action,  or  any 
rectification  of  it — as  in  the  case  of  standing  straight — • 
then  the  main  thing  is  to  find  some  act  which  is  dif- 
ferent from  the  usual  one.  The  discovery  and  per- 
formance of  this  unaccustomed  act  is  the  "  end  "  to 
which  we  must  devote  all  attention.  Otherwise  we  shall 


HABITS  AND  WILL  35 

simply  do  the  old  thing  over  again,  no  matter  what  is 
our  conscious  command.  The  only  way  of  accomplish- 
ing this  discovery  is  through  a  flank  movement.  We 
must  stop  even  thinking  of  standing  up  straight.  To 
think  of  it  is  fatal,  for  it  commits  us  to  the  operation  of 
an  established  habit  of  standing  wrong.  We  must  find 
an  act  within  our  power  which  is  disconnected  from  any 
thought  about  standing.  We  must  start  to  do  another 
thing  which  on  one  side  inhibits  our  falling  into  the 
customary  bad  position  and  on  the  other  side  is  the 
beginning  of  a  series  of  acts  which  may  lead  into  the 
correct  posture.*  The  hard-drinker  who  keeps  think- 
ing of  not  drinking  is  doing  what  he  can  to  initiate  the 
acts  which  lead  to  drinking.  He  is  starting  with  the 
stimulus  to  his  habit.  To  succeed  he  must  find  some 
positive  interest  or  line  of  action  which  will  inhibit  the 
drinking  series  and  which  by  instituting  another  course 
of  action  will  bring  him  to  his  desired  end.  In  short, 
the  man's  true  aim  is  to  discover  some  course  of  action, 
having  nothing  to  do  with  the  habit  of  drink  or  stand- 
ing erect,  which  will  take  him  where  he  wants  to  go. 
The  discovery  of  this  other  series  is  at  once  his  means 
and  his  end.  Until  one  takes  intermediate  acts  seri- 
ously enough  to  treat  them  as  ends,  one  wastes  one's 
time  in  any  effort  at  change  of  habits.  Of  the  inter- 
mediate acts,  the  most  important  is  the  next  one.  The 
first  or  earliest  means  is  the  most  important  end  to 

discover. 

*The  technique  of  this  process  is  stated  in  the  book  of  Mr. 
Alexander  already  referred  to,  and  the  theoretical  statement  given 
is  borrowed  from  Mr.  Alexander's  analysis. 


36     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

Means  and  ends  are  two  names  for  the  same  reality. 
The  terms  denote  not  a  division  in  reality  but  a  dis- 
tinction in  judgment.  Without  understanding  this  fact 
we  cannot  understand  the  nature  of  habits  nor  can  we 
pass  beyond  the  usual  separation  of  the  moral  and 
non-moral  in  conduct.  "  End  "  is  a  name  for  a  series 
of  acts  taken  collectively — like  the  term  army. 
"  Means  "  is  a  name  for  the  same  series  taken  distrib- 
utively — like  this  soldier,  that  officer.  To  think  of  the 
end  signifies  to  extend  and  enlarge  our  view  of  the  act 
to  be  performed.  It  means  to  look  at  the  next  act  in 
perspective,  not  permitting  it  to  occupy  the  entire  field 
of  vision.  To  bear  the  end  in  mind  signifies  that  we 
should  not  stop  thinking  about  our  next  act  until  we 
form  some  reasonably  clear  idea  of  the  course  of  action 
to  which  it  commits  us.  To  attain  a  remote  end  means 
on  the  other  hand  to  treat  the  end  as  a  series  of  means. 
To  say  that  an  end  is  remote  or  distant,  to  say  in  fact 
that  it  is  an  end  at  all,  is  equivalent  to  saying  that 
obstacles  intervene  between  us  and  it.  If,  however,  it 
remains  a  distant  end,  it  becomes  a  mere  end,  that  is  a 
dream.  As  soon  as  we  have  projected  it,  we  must  begin 
to  work  backward  in  thought.  We  must  change  what 
is  to  be  done  into  a  how,  the  means  whereby.  The 
end  thus  re-appears  as  a  series  of  "  what  nexts,"  and  the 
what  next  of  chief  importance  is  the  one  nearest  the 
present  state  of  the  one  acting.  Only  as  the  end  is 
converted  into  means  is  it  definitely  conceived,  or  in- 
tellectually defined,  to  say  nothing  of  being  executable. 
Just  as  end,  it  is  vague,  cloudy,  impressionistic.  We 


HABITS  AND  WILL  37 

do  not  know  what  we  are  really  after  until  a  course  of 
action  is  mentally  worked  out.  Aladdin  with  his  lamp 
could  dispense  with  translating  ends  into  means,  but  no 
.one  else  can  do  so. 

Now  the  thing  which  is  closest  to  us,  the  means 
within  our  power,  is  a  habit.  ^Some  habit  impeded  by 
circumstances  is  the  source  of  the  projection  of  the  end. 
It  is  also  the  primary  means  in  its  realization.  The 
habit  is  propulsive  and  moves  anyway  toward  some  end. 
or  re  -j$,  whether  it  is  projected  as  an  end-in-view  or 
not.  The  man  who  can  walk  does  walk;  the  man  who 
can  talk  does  converse — if  only  with  himself.  How  is 
this  statement  to  be  reconciled  with  the  fact  that  we 
are  not  always  walking  and  talking;  that  our  habits 
seem  so  often  to  be  laten^  ympprfltiivp?>  S"^V>  inactivity 
holds  only  of  overt,  visibly  obvious  operation.  In 
actuality  j;ach  habit  operates  all  the  timr  pf  wnkittfT' 
lifej^ihough  like  a  member  of  a  crew  taking  his  turn 
at  the  wheel,  its  operation  becomes  the  dominantly_ 
characteristic  trait  of  an  act  only  occasionally  or 
rarely. 

The  habit  of  walking  is  expressed  in  what  a  man 
sees  when  he  keeps  still,  even  in  dreams.  The  recog- 
nition of  distances  and  directions  of  things  from  his 
place  at  rest  is  the  obvious  proof  of  this  statement. 
The  habit  of  locomotion  is  latent  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
covered  up,  counteracted,  by  a  habit  of  seeing  which  is 
definitely  at  the  fore.  But  counteraction  is  not  sup- 
pression. Locomotion  is  a  potential  energy,  not  in 
any  metaphysical  sense,  but  in  the  physical  sense  in 


38     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

which  potential  energy  as  well  as  kinetic  has  to  be  taken 
account  of  in  any  scientific  description.  Everything 
that  a  man  who  has  the  habit  of  locomotion  does  and 
thinks  he  does  and  thinks  differently  on  that  account. 
This  fact  is  recognized  in  current  psychology,  but  is 
falsified  into  an  association  of  sensations.  Were  it  not 
for  the  continued  operation  of  all  habits  in  every  act, 
no  such  thing  as  character  could  exist.  There  would 
be  simply  a  bundle,  an  untied  bundle  at  that,  of  isolated 
acts.  Character  is  the  Interpenetration  of  habits.  If 
each  habit  existed  in  an  insulated  compartment  and 
operated  without  affecting  or  being  affected  by  others, 
character  would  not  exist.  That  is,  ^conduct  would  lack 
unity  being  only  a  juxtaposition  of  jjJisconnected_jeflc- 
tions  to  separated  situations.  But  since  environments 
overlap,  since  situations  are  continuous  and  those  re- 
mote from  one  another  contain  like  elements, acgntHro- 
ous  modification  of  habits  by  one_anpther  is  constantly 
going  on.  A  man  may  give  himself  away  in  a  look  or 
a  gesture.  Character  can  be  read  through  the  medium 
of  individual  acts. 

Of  course  interpenetration  is  never  total.  It  is  most 
marked  in  what  we  call  strong  characters.  Integration 
is  an  achievement  rather  than  a  datum.  ^A_jgeak,  jjn^" 
stable,  vacillating  character  is  one  in  which  different 
habits  alternate  with  one  another  rather  than  embody 
one  another.  The  strength,  solidity  of  a  habit  is  not 
its  own  possession  but  is  due  to  reinforcement  by  the 
force  of  other  habits  which  it  absorbs  into  itself. 
Routine  specialization  always  works  against  interpene- 


HABITS  AND  WILL  39 

tration.  Men  with  "  pigeon-hole  "  minds  are  not  in- 
frequent. Their  diverse  standards  and  methods  of 
judgment  for  scientific,  religious,  political  matters  tes- 
tify to  isolated  compartmental  habits  of  action.  Char- 
acter that  is  unable  to  undergo  successfully  the  strain 
of  thought  and  effort  required  to  bring  competing 
tendencies  into  a  unity,  builds  up  barriers  between 
different  systems  of  likes  and  dislikes.  The  emotional 
stress  incident  to  conflict  is  avoided  not  by  readjust- 
ment but  by  effort  at  confinement.  Yet  the  exception 
proves  the  rule.  Such  persons  are  successful  in  keeping 
different  ways  of  reacting  apart  from  one  another  in 
consciousness  rather  than  in  action.  Their  character 
is  marked  by  stigmata  resulting  from  this  division. 
The  mutual  modification  of  habits 


enables  us  to  define  jhj^jiature  ^?  the  moral  situation. 
It  is  not  necessary  nor  advisable  to  be  always  consid- 
ering the  interaction  of  h^bits__wjth_one_a.nother,  that 
is  to  say  the  effect  of  a  particular  habit  upon  char- 
acter— which  is  a  name  for  the  total  interaction.  Such 
consideration  distracts  attention  from  the  problem  of 
building  up  an  effective  habit.  A  man  who  is  learning 
French,  or  chess-playing  or  engineering  has  his  hands 
full  with  his  particular  occupation.  He  would  be  con- 
fused and  hampered  by  constant  inquiry  into  its  effect 
upon  character.  He  would  resemble  the  centipede  who 
by  trying  to  think  of  the  movement  of  each  leg  in  re- 
lation to  all  the  others  was  rendered  unable  to  travel. 
At  any  given  time,  certain  habits  must  be  taken  for 
granted  as  a  matter  of  course.  Their  operation  is  not 


40     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

a  matter  of  moral  judgment.  They  are  treated  as 
technical,  recreational,  professional,  hygienic  or  eco- 
nomic or  esthetic  rather  than  moral.  To  lug  in  morals, 
or  ulterior  effect  on  character  at  every  point,  is  to 
cultivate  moral  valetudinarianism  or  priggish  posing. 
Nevertheless  any  act,  even  that  one  which  passes  ordi- 
narily as  trivial,  may  entail  such  consequences  for  habit 
and  character  as  upon  occasion  to  require  judgment 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  whole  body  of  conduct.  It 
then  comes  under  moral  scrutiny.  To  know  when  to 
leave  acts  without  distinctive  moral  judgment  and 
when  to  subject  them  to  it  is  itself  a  large  factor  in 
morality.  The  serious  matter  is  that  this  relative 
pragmatic,  or  intellectual,  distinction  between  the  moral 
and  non-moral,  has  been  solidified  into  a  fixed  and  abso- 
lute distinction,  so  that  some  acts  are  popularly  re- 
garded as  forever  within  and  others  forever  without  the 
moral  domain.  From  this  fatal  error  recognition  of  the 
relations  of  one  habit  to  others  preserves  us.  For  it 
makes  us  see  that  character  is  the  name  given  to  the 
working  interaction  of  habits,  and  that  the  cumulative 
effect  of  insensible  modifications  worked  by  a  particular 
habit  in  the  body  of  preferences  may  at  any  moment 
require  attention. 

The  word  habit  may  seem  twisted  somewhat  from 
its  customary  use  when  employed  as  we  have  been  using 
it.  But  we  need  a  word  to  express  that  kind  of  human 
activity  which  is  influenced  by  prior  activity  and  in 
that  sense  acquired;  which  contains  within  itself  a  cer- 
,tain  ordering  or  systematization  of  minor  elements  of 


HABITS  AND  WILL  41 

action;  which  is  projective,  dynamic  in  quality,  ready 
for  overt  manifestation ;  and  which  is  operative  in  some 
subdued  subordinate  ,form  even  when  not  obviously 
dominating  activity.  Habit  even  in  its  ordinary  usage 
comes  nearer  to  denoting  these  facts  than  any  other 
word.  If  the  facts  are  lecognized  we  may  also  use  the 
words  attitude  and  disposition.  But  unless  we  have 
first  made  clear  to  ourselves  the  facts  which  have  been 
set  forth  under  the  name  of  habit,  these  words  are  more 
likely  to  be  misleading  than  is  the  word  habit.  For  the 
latter  conveys  explicitly  the  sense  of  operativeness, 
actuality.  Attitude  and,  as  ordinarily  used,  disposition 
suggest  something  latent,  potential,  something  which 
requires  a  positive  stimulus  outside  themselves  to  be- 
come active.  If  we  perceive  that  they  denote  positive 
forms  of  action  which  are  released  merely  through 
removal  of  some-counteracting  "inhibitory"  tendency. 
and  then  become  overt,  we  may  employ  them  instead  of 
the  word  habit  to  denote  subdued,  non-patent  forms  of 
the  latter. 

In  this  case,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the  word 
disposition  means  predisposition,  readiness  to  act 
overtly  in  a  specific  fashion  whenever  opportunity  is 
presented,  this  opportunity  consisting  in  removal  of 
the  pressure  due  to  the  dominance  of  some  overt  habit ; 
and  that  attitude  means  some  special  case  of  a  pre- 
disposition, the  disposition  waiting  as  it  were  to  spring 
through  an  opened  door.  While  it  is  admitted  that  the 
word  habit  has  been  used  in  a  somewhat  broader  sense 
than  is  usual,  we  must  protest  against  the  tendency  in 


4£  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

psychological  literature  to  limit  its  meaning  to  repe- 
tition. This  usage  is  much  less  :'n  accord  with  popular 
usage  than  is  the  wider  way  in  \vhich  we  have  used  the 
word.  It  assumes  from  the  start  the  identity  of  habit 
with  routine.  Repetition  is  in-  no  sense  the  essence  of 
habit.  Tendency  to  repeat  acts  is  an  incident  of  many 
habits  but  not  of  all.  A  man  with  the  habit  of  giving 
way  to  anger  may  show  his  habit  by  a  murderous  attack 
upon  some  one  who  has  offended.  His  act  is  nonethe- 
less due  to  habit  because  it  occurs  only  once  in  his  life. 
The  essence  of  habit  is  an  acquired  predisposition  to 
ways  or  modes  of  response,  not  to  particular  acts  ex- 
cept as,  under  special  conditions,  these  express  a  way 
of  behaving.  Habit  means  special  sensitiveness  or  ac- 
cessibility to  certain  classes  of  stimuli,  standing  predi- 
lections and  aversions,  rather  than  bare  recurrence  of 
specific  acts.  It  means  will. 


Ill 


The  Dynamic  force  of  habit  taken  in  connection  with 
the  continuity  of  habits  with  one  another  explains  the 
unity  of  character  and  conduct,  or  speaking  more  con- 
cretely of  motive  and  act,  will  and  deed.     Moral  the- 
ories have  frequently  separated  these  things  from  each 
other.     One  type  of  theory,  for  example,  has  asserted 
that  only  will,  disposition,  motive  counts  morally ;  that 
acts  are  external,  physical,  accidental ;  that  moral  good 
is  different  from  goodness  in  act  since  the  latter  is  meas- 
ured by  consequences,  while  moral  good  or  virtue  is  in- 
trinsic, complete  in  itself,  a  jewel  shining  by  its  own 
light — a  somewhat  dangerous  metaphor  however.     The 
other  type  of  theory  has  asserted  that  such  a  view  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  all  that  is  necessary  to  be 
virtuous  is  to  cultivate  states  of  feeling;  that  a  pre- 
mium is  put  on  disregard  of  the  actual  consequences 
of  conduct,  and  agents  are  deprived  of  any  objective 
criterion  for  the  Tightness  and  wrongness  of  acts,  being 
thrown  back  on  their  own  whims,  prejudices  and  private 
peculiarities.      Like  most   opposite   extremes  in  philo- 
sophic theories,  the  two  theories  suffer  from  a  common 
mistake.     Both  of  them  ignore  the  projective  force  of 
habit   and  the  implication   of  habits  in  one   another. 
Hence  they  separate  a  unified  deed  into  two  disjoined 
parts,  an  inner  called  motive  and  an  outer  called  act. 

43 


44  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

The  doctrine  that  the  chief  good  of  man  is  good  will 
easily  wins  acceptance  from  honest  men.  For  common- 
sense  employs  a  juster  psychology  than  either  of  the 
theories  just  mentioned.  By  will,  common-sense  under- 
stands something  practical  and  moving.  It  under- 
stands the  body  of  habits,  of  active  dispositions  which 
makes  a  man  do  what  he  does.  Will  is  thus  not  some- 
thing opposed  to  consequences  or  severed  from  them. 
It  is  a  cause  of  consequences ;  it  is  causation  in  its  per- 
sonal aspect,  the  aspect  immediately  preceding  action. 
It  hardly  seems  conceivable  to  practical  sense  that  by 
will  is  meant  something  which  can  be  complete  without 
reference  to  deeds  prompted  and  results  occasioned. 
Even  the  sophisticated  specialist  cannot  prevent  re- 
lapses from  such  an  absurdity  back  into  common-sense. 
Kant,  who  went  the  limit  in  excluding  consequences  from 
moral  value,  was  sane  enough  to  maintain  that  a  society 
of  men  of  good  will  would  be  a  society  which  in  fact 
would  maintain  social  peace,  freedom  and  cooperation. 
We  take  the  will  for  the  deed  not  as  a  substitute  for 
doing,  or  a  form  of  doing  nothing,  but  in  the  sense 
that,  other  things  being  equal,  the  right  disposition 
will  produce  the  right  deed.  For  a  disposition  means 
a  tendency  to  act,  a  potential  energy  needing  only  op- 
portunity to  become  kinetic  and  overt.  Apart  from 
such  tendency  a  "  virtuous  "  disposition  is  either  hy- 
pocrisy or  self-deceit. 

Common-sense  in  short  never  loses  sight  wholly  of 
the  two  facts  which  limit  and  define  a  moral  situation. 
One  is  that  consequences  fix  the  moral  quality  of  an 


45 

act.  The  other  is  thai  upon  the  whole,  or  in  the  long 
run  but  not  unqualifiedly,  consequences  are  what  they 
are  because  of  the  neture  of  desire  and  disposition. 
Hence  there  is  a  natural  contempt  for  the  morality  of 
the  "  good  "  man  who  does  not  show  his  goodness  in 
the  results  of  his  habitual  acts.  But  there  is  also  an 
aversion  to  attributing  omnipotence  to  even  the  best 
of  good  dispositions,  and  hence  an  aversion  to  applying 
the  criterion  of  consequences  unreservedly.  A  holiness 
of  character  which  is  celebrated  only  on  holy-days  is 
unreal.  A  virtue  of  honesty,  or  chastity  or  benevo- 
lence which  lives  upon  itself  apart  from  definite  results 
consumes  itself  and  goes  up  in  smoke.  The  separation 
of  motive  from  motive-force  in  action  accounts  both 
for  the  morbidities  and  futilities  of  the  professionally 
good,  and  for  the  more  or  less  subconscious  contempt 
for  morality  entertained  by  men  of  a  strong  executive 
habit  with  their  preference  for  "  getting  things  done." 
Yet  there  is  justification  for  the  common  assump- 
tion that  deeds  cannot  be  judged  properly  without  tak- 
ing their  animating  disposition  as  well  as  their  concrete 
consequences  into  account.  The  reason,  however,  lies 
not  in  isolation  of  disposition  from  consequences,  but 
in  the  need  for  viewing  consequences  broadly.  This  act 
is  only  one  of  a  multitude  of  acts.  If  we  confine  our- 
selves to  the  consequences  of  this  one  act  we  shall  come 
out  with  a  poor  reckoning.  Disposition  is  habitual, 
persistent.  It  shows  itself  therefore  in  many  acts  and 
in  many  consequences.  Only  as  we  keep  a  running  ac- 
count, can  we  judge  disposition,  disentangling  its  ten- 


46     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

dency  from  accidental  accompaniments.  When  once 
we  have  got  a  fair  idea  of  its  teidency,  we  are  able  to 
place  the  particular  consequences  of  a  single  act  in  a 
wider  context  of  continuing  consequences.  Thus  we 
protect  ourselves  from  taking  as  trivial  a  habit  which 
is  serious,  and  from  exaggerating  into  momentousness 
an  act  which,  viewed  in  the  light  of  aggregate  conse- 
quences, is  innocent.  There  is  no  need  to  abandon 
common-sense  which  tells  us  in  judging  acts  first  to 
inquire  into  disposition;  but  there  is  great  need  that  the 
estimate  of  disposition  be  enlightened  by  a  scientific 
psychology.  Our  legal  procedure,  for  example,  wob- 
bles between  a  too  tender  treatment  of  criminality  and 
a  viciously  drastic  treatment  of  it.  The  vacillation  can 
be  remedied  only  as  we  can  analyze  an  act  in  the  light 
of  habits,  and  analyze  habits  in  the  light  of  education, 
environment  and  prior  acts.  The  dawn  of  truly  sci- 
entific criminal  law  will  come  when  each  individual  case 
is  approached  with  something  corresponding  to  the 
complete  clinical  record  which  every  competent  physi- 
cian attempts  to  procure  as  a  matter  of  course  in  deal- 
ing with  his  subjects. 

Consequences  include  effects  upon  character,  upon 
confirming  and  weakening  habits,  as  well  as  tangibly 
obvious  results.  To  keep  an  eye  open  to  these  effects 
upon  character  may  signify  the  most  reasonable  of 
precautions  or  one  of  the  most  nauseating  of  practices. 
It  may  mean  concentration  of  attention  upon  personal 
rectitude  in  neglect  of  objective  consequences,  a  prac- 
tice which  creates  a  wholly  unreal  rectitude.  But  it 


CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT  47 

may  mean  that  the  survey  of  objective  consequences 
is  duly  extended  in  time.  An  act  of  gambling  may  be 
judged,  for  example,  by  its  immediate  overt  effects, 
consumption  of  time,  energy,  disturbance  of  ordinary 
monetary  considerations,  etc.  It  may  also  be  judged 
by  its  consequences  upon  character,  setting  up  an  en- 
during love  of  excitement,  a  persistent  temper  of  spec- 
ulation, and  a  persistent  disregard  of  sober,  steady 
work.  To  take  the  latter  efFt  :ts  into  account  is  equiv- 
alent to  taking  a  broad  vie'/  of  future  consequences; 
for  these  dispositions  affect  future  companionships, 
vocation  and  avocations,  the  whole  tenor  of  domestic 
and  public  life. 

For  similar  reasons,  while  common-sense  does  not  run 
into  that  sharp  opposition  of  virtues  or  moral  goods 
and  natural  goods  which  has  played  such  a  large  part 
in  professed  moralities,  it  does  not  insist  upon  an  exact 
identity  of  the  two.  Virtues  are  ends  because  they  are 
such  important  means.  To  be  honest,  courageous, 
kindly  is  to  be  in  the  way  of  producing  specific  natural 
goods  or  satisfactory  fulfilments.  Error  comes  into 
theories  when  the  moral  goods  are  separated  from  their 
consequences  and  also  when  the  attempt  is  made  to 
secure  an  exhaustive  and  unerring  identification  of  the 
two.  There  is  a  reason,  valid  as  far  as  it  goes,  for 
distinguishing  virtue  as  a  moral  good  resident  in  char- 
acter alone,  from  objective  consequences.  As  matter 
of  fact,  a  desirable  trait  of  character  does  not  always 
produce  desirable  results  while  good  things  often  hap- 
pen with  no  assistance  from  good  will.  Luck,  accident, 


48  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

contingency,  plays  its  part.  The  act  of  a  good  char- 
acter it;  deflected  in  operation,  while  a  monomaniacal 
egotism  may  employ  a  desire  for  glory  and  power  to 
perform  acts  which  satisfy  crying  social  needs.  Reflec- 
tion shows  that  we  must  supplement  the  conviction  of 
the  moral  connection  betweeen  character  or  habit  and 
consequences  by  two  considerations. 

One  is  the  fact  that  ve  are  inclined  to  take  the  no- 
tions of  goodness  in  character  and  goodness  in  results 
in  too  fixed  a  way.  Persi'itent  disparity  between  virtu- 
ous disposition  and  actual  ^outcome  shows  that  we  have 
misjudged  either  the  nature  of  virtue  or  of  success. 
Judgments  of  both  motive  and  consequences  are  still, 
in  the  absence  of  methods  of  scientific  analysis  and  con- 
tinuous registration  and  reporting,  rudimentary  and 
conventional.  We  are  inclined  to  wholesale  judgments 
of  character,  dividing  men  into  goats  and  sheep,  in- 
stead of  recognizing  that  all  character  is  speckled,  and 
that  the  problem  of  moral  judgment  is  one  of  discrim- 
inating the  complex  of  acts  and  habits  into  tendencies 
which  are  to  be  specifically  cultivated  and  condemned. 
We  need  to  study  consequences  more  thoroughly  and 
keep  track  of  them  more  continuously  before  we  shall 
be  in  a  position  where  we  can  pass  with  reasonable  as- 
surance upon  the  good  and  evil  in  either  disposition 
or  results.  But  even  when  proper  allowances  are  made, 
we  are  forcing  the  pace  when  we  assume  that  there  is  or 
ever  can  be  an  exact  equation  of  disposition  and  out- 
come. We  have  to  admit  the  role  of  accident. 

We  cannot  get  beyond  tendencies,  and  must  perforce 


CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT  49 

content  ourselves  with  judgments  of  tendency.  The 
honest  man,  we  are  told,  acts  upon  "  principle  "  and 
not  from  considerations  of  expediency,  that  is,  of  par- 
ticular consequences.  The  truth  in  this  saying  is  that 
it  is  not  safe  to  judge  the  worth  of  a  proposed  act 
by  its  probable  consequences  in  an  isolated  case.  The 
word  "  principle  "  is  a  eulogistic  cover  for  the  fact  of 
tendency.  The  word  "  tend^^y  "  i°  »*i  aftpmytf  to 
combine  two  facts,  one  tfoat.  habits  hayp  ^  pprfaiy]  causal 
efficacy,  theoFKer  that  their  outworking  in  any  partic- 
ular case  is  subject  to  Contingencies,  to_gircumstancaa 
which  are  unforeseeable  and  which  carry  an  act  one 
side  of  its  usual  effect.  In  cases  of  doubt,  there  is  no 
recourse  save  to  stick  to  "  tendency,"  that  is,  to  the 
probable  effect  of  a  habit  in  the  long  run,  or  as  we  say 
upon  the  whole.  Otherwise  we  are  on  the  lookout  for 
exceptions  which  favor  our  immediate  desire.  The 
trouble  is  that  we  are  not  content  with  modest  proba- 
bilities. So  when  we  find  that  a  good  disposition  may 
work  out  badly,  we  say,  as  Kant  did,  that  the  working- 
out,  the  consequence,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  moral 
quality  of  an  act,  or  we  strain  for  the  impossible,  and 
aim  at  some  infallible  calculus  of  consequences  by  which 
to  measure  moral  worth  in  each  specific  case. 

Human  conceit  has  played  a  great  part.  It  has 
demanded  that  the  whole  universe  be  judged  from  the 
standpoint  of  desire  and  disposition,  or  at  least  from 
that  of  the  desire  and  disposition  of  the  good  man.  The 
effect  of  religion  has  been  to  cherish  this  conceit  by 
making-  men  think  that  the  universe  invariably  conspires 


50  HUMAN   NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

to  support  the  good  and  bring  the  evil  to  naught.  By  a 
subtle  logic,  the  effect  has  been  to  render  morals  unreal 
and  transcendental.  For  since  the  world  of  actual  ex- 
perience does  not  guarantee  this  identity  of  character 
and  outcome,  it  is  inferred  that  there  must  be  some 
ulterior  truer  reality  which  enforces  an  equation  that 
is  violated  in  this  life.  Hence  the  common  notion  of  an- 
other world  in  which  vice  and  virtue  of  character  pro- 
duce their  exact  moral  meed.  The  idea  is  equally  found 
as  an  actuating  force  in  Plato.  Moral  realities  must  be 
supreme.  Yet  they  are  flagrantly  contradicted  in  a 
world  where  a  Socrates  drinks  the  hemlock  of  the  crim- 
inal, and  where  the  vicious  occupy  the  seats  of  the 
mighty.  Hence  there  must  be  a  truer  ultimate  reality 
in  which  justice  is  only  and  absolutely  justice.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  idea  lurks  behind  every  aspiration 
for  realization  of  abstract  justice  or  equality  or  lib- 
erty. It  is  the  source  of  all  "  idealistic  "  utopias  and 
also  of  all  wholesale  pessimism  and  distrust  of  life. 
Utilitarianism  illustrates  another  way  of  mistreating 
the  situation.  Tendency  is  not  good  enough  for  the 
utilitarians.  They  want  a  mathematical  equation  of 
act  and  consequence.  Hence  they  make  light  of  the 
steady  and  controllable  factor,  the  factor  of  disposi- 
tion, and  fasten  upon  just  the  things  which  are  most 
subject  to  incalculable  accident — pleasures  and  pains — 
and  embark  upon  the  hopeless  enterprise  of  judging  an 
act  apart  from  character  on  the  basis  of  definite  results. 
An  honestly  modest  theory  will  stick  to  the  probabil- 
ities of  tendency,  and  not  import  mathematics  into 


CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT  51 

morals.  It  will  be  alive  and  sensitive  to  consequences 
as  they  actually  present  themselves,  because  it  knows 
that  they  give  the  only  instruction  we  can  procure  as 
to  the  meaning  of  habits  and  dispositions.  But  it  will 
never  assume  that  a  moral  judgment  which  reaches  cer- 
tainty is  possible.  We  have  just  to  do  the  best  we  can 
with  habits,  the  forces  most  under  our  control;  and 
we  shall  have  our  hands  more  than  full  in  spelling  out 
their  general  tendencies  without  attempting  an  exact 
judgment  upon  each  deed.  For  every  habit  incorpo- 
rates within  itself  some  part  of  the  objective  environ- 
ment, and  no  habit  and  no  amount  of  habits  can  in- 
corporate the  entire  environment  within  itself  or  them- 
selves. There  will  always  be  disparity  between  them 
and  the  results  actually  attained.  Hence  the  work  of 
intelligence  in  observing  consequences  and  in  revising 
and  readjusting  habits,  even  the  best  of  good  habits, 
can  never  be  foregone.  Consequences  reveal  unexpected 
potentialities  in  our  habits  whenever  these  habits  are 
exercised  in  a  different  environment  from  that  in  which 
they  were  formed.  The  assumption  of  a  stably  uniform 
environment  (even  the  hankering  for  one)  expresses  a 
fiction  due  to  attachment  to  old  habits.  The  utilitarian 
theory  of  equation  of  acts  with  consequences  is  as  much 
a  fiction  of  self-conceit  as  is  the  assumption  of  a  fixed 
transcendental  world  wherein  moral  ideals  are  eternally 
and  immutably  real.  Both  of  them  deny  in  effect  the 
relevancy  of  time,  of  change,  to  morals,  while  time  is 
of  the  essence  of  the  moral  struggle. 

We  thus  come,  by  an  unexpected  path,  upon  the  old 


52  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

question  of  the  objectivity  or  subjectivity  of  morals. 
Primarily  they  are  objective.  For  will,  as  we  have 
seen,  means,  in  the  concrete,  habits;  and  habits  incor- 
porate an  environment  within  themselves.  They  are 
adjustments  of  the  environment,  not  merely  to  it.  At 
the  same  time,  the  environment  is  many,  not  one ;  hence 
will,  disposition,  is  plural.  Diversity  does  not  of  itself 
imply  conflict,  but  it  implies  the  possibility  of  conflict, 
and  this  possibility  is  realized  in  fact.  Life,  for  ex- 
ample, involves  the  habit  of  eating,  which  in  turn  in- 
volves a  unification  of  organism  and  nature.  But  never- 
theless this  habit  comes  into  conflict  with  other  habits 
which  are  also  "  objective,"  or  in  equilibrium  with  their 
environments.  Because  the  environment  is  not  all  of 
one  piece,  man's  house  is  divided  within  itself,  against 
itself.  Honor  or  consideration  for  others  or  courtesy 
conflict  with  hunger.  Then  the  notion  of  the  complete 
objectivity  of  morals  gets  a  shock.  Those  who  wish 
to  maintain  the  idea  unimpaired  take  the  road  which 
leads  to  transcendentalism.  The  empirical  world,  they 
say,  is  indeed  divided,  and  hence  any  natural  morality 
must  be  in  conflict  with  itself.  This  self-contradiction 
however  only  points  to  a  higher  fixed  reality  with  which 
a  true  and  superior  morality  is  alone  concerned.  Ob- 
jectivity is  saved  but  at  the  expense  of  connection  with 
human  affairs.  Our  problem  is  to  see  what  objectivity 
signifies  upon  a  naturalistic  basis;  how  morals  are  ob- 
jective and  yet  secular  and  social.  Then  we  may  be 
able  to  decide  in  what  crisis  of  experience  morals  be- 


CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT  53 

come  legitimately  dependent  upon  character  or  self — 
that  is,  "  subjective." 

Prior  discussion  points  the  way  to  the  answer.  A 
hungry  man  could  not  conceive  food  as  a  good  unless 
he  had  actually  experienced,  with  the  support  of  en- 
vironing conditions,  food  as  good.  The  objective  sat- 
isfaction comes  first.  But  he  finds  himself  in  a  situ- 
ation where  the  good  is  denied  in  fact.  It  then  lives  in 
imagination.  The  habit  denied  overt  expression  asserts 
itself  in  idea.  It  sets  up  the  thought,  the  ideal,  of 
food.  This  thought  is  not  what  is  sometimes  called 
thought,  a  pale  bloodless  abstraction,  but  is  charged 
with  the  motor  urgent  force  of  habit.  Food  as  a  good 
is  now  subjective,  personal.  But  it  has  its  source  in 
objective  conditions  and  it  moves  forward  to  new  ob- 
jective conditions.  For  it  works  to  secure  a  change  of 
environment  so  that  food  will  again  be  present  in  fact. 
Food  is  a  "  subjective  "  good  during  a  temporary  tran- 
sitional stage  from  one  object  to  another. 

The  analogy  with  morals  lies  upon  the  surface.  A 
habit  impeded  in  overt  operation  continues  nonetheless 
to  operate.  It  manifests  itself  in  desireful  thought, 
that  is  in  an  ideal  or  imagined  object  which  embodies 
within  itself  the  force  of  a  frustrated  habit.  There  is 
therefore  demand  for  a  changed  environment,  a  demand 
which  can  be  achieved  only  by  some  modification  and 
rearrangement  of  old  habits.  Even  Plato  preserves  an 
intimation  of  the  natural  function  of  ideal  objects  when 
he  insists  upon  their  value  as  patterns  for  use  in  re- 


54     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

organization  of  the  actual  scene.  The  pity  is  that  he 
could  not  see  that  patterns  exist  only  within  and  for 
the  sake  of  reorganization,  so  that  they,  rather  than 
empirical  or  natural  objects,  are  the  instrumental  af- 
fairs. Not  seeing  this,  he  converted  a  function  of 
reorganization  into  a  metaphysical  reality.  If  we  essay 
a  technical  formulation  we  shall  say  that  morality  be- 
comes legitimately  subjective  or  personal  when  activ- 
ities which  once  included  objective  factors  in  their  oper- 
ation temporarily  lose  support  from  objects,  and  yet 
strive  to  change  existing  conditions  until  they  regain 
a  support  which  has  been  lost.  It  is  all  of  a  kind 
with  the  doings  of  a  man,  who  remembering  a  prior 
satisfaction  of  thirst  and  the  conditions  under  which 
it  occurred,  digs  a  well.  For  the  time  being  water  in 
reference  to  his  activity  exists  in  imagination  not  in 
fact.  But  this  imagination  is  not  a  self-generated,  self- 
enclosed,  psychical  existence.  It  is  the  persistent  op- 
eration of  a  prior  object  which  has  been  incorporated 
in  effective  habit.  There  is  no  miracle  in  the  fact  that 
an  object  in  a  new  context  operates  in  a  new  way. 

Of  transcendental  morals,  it  may  at  least  be  said 
that  they  retain  the  intimation  of  the  objective  char- 
acter of  purposes  and  goods.  Purely  subjective  morals 
arise  when  the  incidents  of  the  temporary  (though  re- 
current) crisis  of  reorganization  are  taken  as  complete 
and  final  in  themselves.  A  self  having  habits  and  atti- 
tudes formed  with  the  cooperation  of  objects  runs 
ahead  of  immediately  surrounding  objects  to  effect  a 
new  equilibration.  Subjective  morals  substitutes  a  self 


CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT  55 

always    set    over   against   objects    and   generating   its. 
ideals  independently  of  objects,  and  in  permanent,  not 
transitory,    opposition    to    them.      Achievement,    any 
achievement,  is  to  it  a  negligible  second  best,  a  cheap 
and  poor  substitute  for  ideals   that  live  only  in  the 
mind,  a  compromise  with  actuality  made  from  physical 
necessity  not  from  moral  reasons.     In  truth,  there  i» 
but  a  temporal  episode.     For  a  time,  a  self,  a  person, 
carries  in  his  own  habits  against  the  forces  of  the  im- 
mediate environment,   a  good  which  the   existing  en- 
,vironment  denies.    For  this  self  moving  temporarily,  in 
isolation  from  objective  conditions,  between  a  good,  a 
completeness,  that  has  been  and  one  that  it  is  hoped 
to  restore  in  some  new  form,  subjective  theories  have 
substituted  an  erring  soul  wandering  hopelessly  between 
a  Paradise  Lost  in  the  dim  past  and  a  Paradise  to  be 
Regained  in  a  dim  future.     In  reality,  even  when  a 
person  is  in  some  respects  at  odds  with  his  environment 
and  so  has  to  act  for  the  time  being  as  the  sole  agent 
of  a  good,  he  in  many  respects  is  still  supported  by 
objective  conditions  and  is  in  possession  of  undisturbed 
goods  and  virtues.     Men  do  die  from  thirst  at  times, 
but  upon  the  whole  in  their  search  for  water  they  are 
sustained    by   other   fulfilled   powers.     But    subjective 
morals  taken  wholesale  sets  up  a  solitary  self  without 
objective  ties  and  sustenance.     In  fact,  there  exists  a 
shifting  mixture  of  vice  and  virtue.     Theories  paint  a 
world  with  a  God  in  heaven  and  a  Devil  in  hell.     Mor- 
alists in  short  have  failed  to  recall  that  a  severance  of 
moral  desire  and  purpose  from  immediate  actualities 


56  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

is  an  inevitable  phase  of  activity  when  habits  persist 
while  the  world  which  they  have  incorporated  alters. 
Back  of  this  failure  lies  the  failure  to  recognize  that 
in  a  changing  world,  old  habits  must  perforce  need  modi- 
fication, no  matter  how  good  they  have  been. 

Obviously  any  such  change  can  be  only  experimen- 
tal. The  lost  objective  good  persists  in  habit,  but  it 
can  recur  in  objective  form  only  through  some  con- 
dition of  affairs  which  has  not  been  yet  experienced, 
and  which  therefore  can  be  anticipated  only  uncertainly 
and  inexactly.  The  essential  point  is  that  anticipation 
should  at  least  guide  as  well  as  stimulate  effort,  that  it 
should  be  a  working  hypothesis  corrected  and  developed 
by  events  as  action  proceeds.  There  was  a  time  when 
men  believed  that  each  object  in  the  external  world 
carried  its  nature  stamped  upon  it  as  a  form,  and  that 
intelligence  consisted  in  simply  inspecting  and  reading 
off  an  intrinsic  self-enclosed  complete  nature.  The  sci- 
entific revolution  which  began  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury came  through  a  surrender  of  this  point  of 
view.  It  began  with  recognition  that  every  natural 
object  is  in  truth  an  event  continuous  in  space  and  time 
with  other  events ;  and  is  to  be  known  only  by  experi- 
mental inquiries  which  will  exhibit  a  multitude  of  com- 
plicated, obscure  and  minute  relationships.  Any  ob- 
served form  or  object  is  but  a  challenge.  The  case  is 
not  otherwise  with  ideals  of  justice  or  peace  or  human 
brotherhood,  or  equality,  or  order.  They  too  are  not 
things  self-enclosed  to  be  known  by  introspection,  as 
objects  were  once  supposed  to  be  known  bj  rational  in- 


CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT  57 

sight.  Like  thunderbolts  and  tubercular  disease  and 
the  rainbow  they  can  be  known  only  by  extensive  and 
minute  observation  of  consequences  incurred  in  action. 
A  false  psychology  of  an  isolated  self  and  a  subjective 
morality  shuts  out  from  morals  the  things  important 
to  it,  acts  and  habits  in  their  objective  consequences. 
At  the  same  time  it  misses  the  point  characteristic  of 
the  personal  subjective  aspect  of  morality:  the  signifi- 
cance of  desire  and  thought  in  breaking  down  old 
rigidities  of  habit  and  preparing  the  way  for  acts  that 
re-create  an  environment. 


IV 

We  often  fancy  that  institutions,  social  custom,  col- 
lective habit,  have  been  formed  by  the  consolidation  of 
individual  habits.  In  the  main  this  supposition  is  false 
to  fact.  To  a  considerable  extent  customs,  or  wide- 
spread uniformities  of  habit,  exist  because  individuals 
face  the  same  situation  and  react  in  like  fashion.  But 
to  a  larger  extent  customs  persist  because  individuals 
form  their  personal  habits  under  conditions  set  by  prior 
customs.  An  individual  usually  acquires  the  morality 
as  he  inherits  the  speech  of  his  social  group.  The 
activities  of  the  group  are  already  there,  and  some 
assimilation  of  his  own  acts  to  their  pattern  is  a  pre- 
requisite of  a  share  therein,  and  hence  of  having  any 
part  in  what  is  going  on.  Each  person  is  born  an 
infant,  and  every  infant  is  subject  from  the  first  breath 
he  draws  and  the  first  cry  he  utters  to  the  attentions 
and  demands  of  others.  These  others  are  not  just 
persons  in  general  with  minds  in  general.  They  are 
beings  with  habits,  and  beings  who  upon  the  whole 
esteem  the  habits  they  have,  if  for  no  other  reason  than 
that,  having  them,  their  imagination  is  thereby  lim- 
ited. The  nature  of  habit  is  to  be  assertive,  insistent, 
self-perpetuating.  There  is  no  miracle  in  the  fact  that 
if  a  child  learns  any  language  he  learns  the  language 
that  those  about  him  speak  and  teach,  especially  since 
his  ability  to  speak  that  language  is  a  pre-condition  of 

68 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  59 

his  entering  into  effective  connection  with  them,  making 
wants  known  and  getting  them  satisfied.  Fond  parents 
and  relatives  frequently  pick  up  a  few  of  the  child's 
spontaneous  modes  of  speech  and  for  a  time  at  least 
they  are  portions  of  the  speech  of  the  group.  But  the 
ratio  which  such  words  bear  to  the  total  vocabulary 
in  use  gives  a  fair  measure  of  the  part  played  by  purely 
individual  habit  in  forming  custom  in  comparison  with 
the  part  played  by  custom  in  forming  individual  habits. 
Few  persons  have  either  the  energy  or  the  wealth  to 
build  private  roads  to  travel  upon.  They  find  it  con- 
venient, "  natural,"  to  use  the  roads  that  are  already 
there;  while  unless  their  private  roads  connect  at  some 
point  with  the  high-way  they  cannot  build  them  even 
if  they  would. 

These  simple  facts  seem  to  me  to  give  a  simple  ex- 
planation of  matters  that  are  often  surrounded  with 
mystery.  To  talk  about  the  priority  of  "  society  "  to 
the  individual  is  to  indulge  in  nonsensical  metaphysics. 
But  to  say  that  some  pre-existent  association  of  human 
beings  is  prior  to  every  particular  human  being  who  is 
born  into  the  world  is  to  mention  a  commonplace. 
These  associations  are  definite  modes  of  interaction  of 
persons  with  one  another;  that  is  to  say  they  form 
customs,  institutions.  There  is  no  problem  in  all  his- 
tory so  artificial  as  that  of  how  "  individuals  "  manage 
to  form  "  society."  The  problem  is  due  to  the  pleasure 
taken  in  manipulating  concepts,  and  discussion  goes 
on  because  concepts  are  kept  from  inconvenient  con- 
tact with  facts.  The  facts  of  infancy  and  sex  have 


60  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

only  to  be  called  to  mind  to  see  how  manufactured  are 
the  conceptions  which  enter  into  this  particular 
problem. 

The  problem,  however,  of  how  those  established 
and  more  or  less  deeply  grooved  systems  of  interaction 
which  we  call  social  groups,  big  and  small,  modify  the 
activities  of  individuals  who  perforce  are  caught-up 
within  them,  and  how  the  activities  of  component  indi- 
viduals remake  and  redirect  previously  established  cus- 
toms is  a  deeply  significant  one.  Viewed  from  the  stand- 
point of  custom  and  its  priority  to  the  formation  of 
habits  in  human  beings  who  are  born  babies  and  grad- 
ually grow  to  maturity,  the  facts  which  are  now  usually 
assembled  under  the  conceptions  of  collective  minds, 
group-minds,  national-minds,  crowd-minds,  etc.,  etc., 
Jose  the  mysterious  air  they  exhale  when  mind  is 
thought  of  (as  orthodox  psychology  teaches  us  to  think 
of  it)  as  something  which  precedes  action.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  see  that  collective  mind  means  anything  more 
than  a  custom  brought  at  some  point  to  explicit,  em- 
phatic consciousness,  emotional  or  intellectual.* 

*  Mob  psychology  comes  under  the  same  principles,  but  in  a 
negative  aspect.  The  crowd  and  mob  express  a  disintegration  of 
habits  which  releases  impulse  and  renders  persons  susceptible 
to  immediate  stimuli,  rather  than  such  a  functioning  of  habits 
as  is  found  in  the  mind  of  a  club  or  school  of  thought  or  a 
political  party.  Leaders  of  an  organization,  that  is  of  an  inter- 
action having  settled  habits,  may,  however,  in  order  to  put  over 
some  schemes  deliberately  resort  to  stimuli  which  will  break 
through  the  crust  of  ordinary  custom  and  release  impulses  on 
such  a  scale  as  to  create  a  mob  psychology.  Since  fear  is  a 
normal  reaction  to  the  unfamiliar,  dread  and  suspicion  are  the 
forces  most  played  upon  to  accomplish  this  result,  together  with 
vast  vague  contrary  hopes.  This  is  an  ordinary  technique  in 
excited  political  campaigns,  in  starting  war,  etc.  But  an  assimi- 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  61 

The  family  into  which  one  is  born  is  a  family  in  a 
village  or  city  which  interacts  with  other  more  or  less 
integrated  systems  of  activity,  and  which  includes  a 
diversity  of  groupings  within  itself,  say,  churches,  po- 
litical parties,  clubs,  cliques,  partnerships,  trade- 
unions,  corporations,  etc.  If  we  start  with  the  tradi- 
tional notion  of  mind  as  something  complete  in  itself, 
then  we  may  well  be  perplexed  by  the  problem  of  how 
a  common  mind,  common  ways  of  feeling  and  believing 
and  purposing,  comes  into  existence  and  then  forms 
these  groups.  The  case  is  quite  otherwise  if  we 
recognize  that  in  any  case  we  must  start  with  grouped 
action,  that  is,  with  some  fairly  settled  system  of  inter- 
action among  individuals.  The  problem  of  origin  and 
development  of  the  various  groupings,  or  definite  cus- 
toms, in  existence  at  any  particular  time  in  any  par- 
ticular place  is  not  solved  by  reference  to  psychic 
causes,  elements,  forces.  It  is  to  be  solved  by  reference 
to  facts  of  action,  demand  for  food,  for  houses,  for  a 


lation  like  that  of  Le  Bon  of  the  psychology  of  democracy  to  the 
psychology  of  a  crowd  in  overriding  individual  judgment  shows 
lack  of  psychological  insight.  A  political  democracy  exhibits 
an  overriding  of  thought  like  that  seen  in  any  convention  or  in- 
stitution. That  is,  thought  is  submerged  in  habit.  In  the  crowd 
and  mob,  it  is  submerged  in  undefined  emotion.  China  and  Japan 
exhibit  crowd  psychology  more  frequently  than  do  western  demo- 
cratic countries.  Not  in  my  judgment  because  of  any  essentially 
Oriental  psychology  but  because  of  a  nearer  background  of  rigid 
and  solid  customs  conjoined  with  the  phenomena  of  a  period  of 
transition.  The  introduction  of  many  novel  stimuli  creates  occa- 
sions where  habits  afford  no  ballast.  Hence  great  waves  of  emo- 
tion easily  sweep  through  masses.  Sometimes  they  are  waves  of 
enthusiasm  for  the  new;  sometimes  of  violent  reaction  against 
it — both  equally  undiscriminating.  The  war  has  left  behind  it 
a  somewhat  similar  situation  in  western  countries. 


62  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

mate,  for  some  one  to  talk  to  and  to  listen  to  one  talk, 
for  control  of  others,  demands  which  are  all  intensified 
by  the  fact  already  mentioned  that  each  person  begins 
a  helpless,  dependent  creature.  I  do  not  mean  of  course 
that  hunger,  fear,  sexual  love,  gregariousness,  sym- 
pathy, parental  love,  love  of  bossing  and  of  being  or- 
dered about,  imitation,  etc.,  play  no  part.  But  I  do 
mean  that  these  words  do  not  express  elements  or  forces 
which  are  psychic  or  mental  in  their  first  intention. 
They  denote  ways  of  behavior.  These  ways  of  behaving 
involve  interaction,  that  is  to  say,  and  prior  groupings. 
And  to  understand  the  existence  of  organized  ways  or 
habits  we  surely  need  to  go  to  physics,  chemistry  and 
physiology  rather  than  to  psychology. 

There  is  doubtless  a  great  mystery  as  to  why  any 
such  thing  as  being  conscious  should  exist  at  all.  But 
if  consciousness  exists  at  all,  there  is  no  mystery  in  its 
being  connected  with  what  it  is  connected  with.  That 
is  to  say,  if  an  activity  which  is  an  interaction  of  vari- 
ous factors,  or  a  grouped  activity,  comes  to  conscious- 
ness it  seems  natural  that  it  should  take  the  form  of 
an  emotion,  belief  or  purpose  that  reflects  the  inter- 
action, that  it  should  be  an  "  our  "  consciousness  or  a 
"  my  "  consciousness.  And  by  this  is  meant  both  that 
it  will  be  shared  by  those  who  are  implicated  in  the 
associative  custom,  or  more  or  less  alike  ir  them  all, 
and  that  it  will  be  felt  or  thought  to  concern  others  as 
well  as  one's  self.  A  family-custom  or  organized  habit 
of  action  comes  into  contact  and  conflict  for  example 
with  that  of  some  other  family.  The  emotions  cf  ruf- 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  63 

fled  pride,  the  belief  about  superiority  or  being  "  as 
good  as  other  people,"  the  intention  to  hold  one's  own 
are  naturally  our  feeling  and  idea  of  our  treatment  and 
position.  Substitute  the  Republican  party  or  the 
American  nation  for  the  family  and  the  general  situ- 
ation remains  the  same.  The  conditions  which  de- 
termine the  nature  and  extent  of  the  particular  group- 
ing in  question  are  matters  of  supreme  import.  But 
they  are  not  as  such  subject-matter  of  psychology,  but 
of  the  history  of  politics,  law,  religion,  economics,  in- 
vention, the  technology  of  communication  and  inter- 
course. Psychology  comes  in  as  an  indispensable  tool. 
But  it  enters  into  the  matter  of  understanding  these 
various  special  topics,  not  into  the  question  of  what 
psychic  forces  form  a  collective  mind  and  therefore  a 
social  group.  That  way  of  stating  the  case  puts  the 
cart  a  long  way  before  the  horse,  and  naturally  gathers 
obscurities  and  mysteries  to  itself.  In  short,  the  pri- 
mary facts  of  social  psychology  center  about  collective 
habit,  custom.  In  addition  to  the  general  psychology 
of  habit — which  is  general  not  individual  in  any  intel- 
ligible sense  of  that  word — we  need  to  find  out  just 
how  different  customs  shape  the  desires,  beliefs,  pur- 
poses of  those  who  are  affected  by  them.  The  problem 
of  social  psychology  is  not  how  either  individual  or 
collective  mind  forms  social  groups  and  customs,  but 
how  different  customs,  established  interacting  arrange- 
ments, form  and  nurture  different  minds.  From  this 
general  statement  we  return  to  our  special  problem, 
which  is  how  the  rigid  character  of  past  custom  has 


64  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

unfavorably  influenced  beliefs,  emotions  and  purposes 
having  to  do  with  morals. 

We  come  back  to  the  fact  that  individuals  begin  their 
career  as  infants.  For  the  plasticity  of  the  young  pre- 
sents a  temptation  to  those  having  greater  experience 
and  hence  greater  power  which  they  rarely  resist.  It 
seems  putty  to  be  molded  according  to  current  designs. 
That  plasticity  also  means  power  to  change  prevailing 
custom  is  ignored.  Docility  is  looked  upon  not  as  abil- 
ity to  learn  whatever  the  world  has  to  teach,  but  as 
subjection  to  those  instructions  of  others  which  reflect 
their  current  habits.  To  be  truly  docile  is  to  be  eager 
to  learn  all  the  lessons  of  active,  inquiring,  expanding 
experience.  The  inert,  stupid  quality  of  current  cus- 
toms perverts  learning  into  a  willingness  to  follow 
where  others  point  the  way,  into  conformity,  constric- 
tion, surrender  of  scepticism  and  experiment.  When 
we  think  of  the  docility  of  the  young  we  first  think  of 
the  stocks  of  information  adults  wish  to  impose  and 
the  ways  of  acting  they  want  to  reproduce.  Then  we 
think  of  the  insolent  coercions,  the  insinuating  briberies, 
the  pedagogic  solemnities  by  which  the  freshness  of 
youth  can  be  faded  and  its  vivid  curiosities  dulled. 
Education  becomes  the  art  of  taking  advantage  of  the 
helplessness  of  the  young;  the  forming  of  habits  be- 
comes a  guarantee  for  the  maintenance  of  hedges  of 
custom. 

Of  course  it  is  not  wholly  forgotten  that  habits  are 
abilities,  arts.  Any  striking  exhibition  of  acquired 
skill  in  physical  matters,  like  that  of  an  acrobat  or 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  65 

billiard-player,  arouses  universal  admiration.  But  we 
like  to  have  innovating  power  limited  to  technical  mat- 
ters and  reserve  our  admiration  for  those  manifestations 
that  display  virtuosity  rather  than  virtue.  In  moral 
matters  it  is  assumed  that  it  is  enough  if  some  ideal  has 
been  exemplified  in  the  life  of  a  leader,  so  that  it  is  now 
the  part  of  others  to  follow  and  reproduce.  For  every 
branch  of  conduct,  there  is  a  Jesus  or  Buddha,  a  Na- 
poleon or  Marx,  a  Froebel  or  Tolstoi,  whose  pattern 
of  action,  exceeding  our  own  grasp,  is  reduced  to  a 
practicable  copy-size  by  passage  through  rows  and 
rows  of  lesser  leaders. 

The  notion  that  it  suffices  if  the  idea,  the  end,  is 
present  in  the  mind  of  some  authority  dominates  formal 
schooling.  It  permeates  the  unconscious  education  de- 
rived from  ordinary  contact  and  intercourse.  Where 
following  is  taken  to  be  normal,  moral  originality  is 
pretty  sure  to  be  eccentric.  But  if  independence  were 
the  rule,  originality  would  be  subjected  to  severe,  ex- 
perimental tests  and  be  saved  from  cranky  eccentricity, 
as  it  now  is  in  say  higher  mathematics.  The  regime 
of  custom  assumes  that  the  outcome  is  the  same  whether 
an  individual  understands  what  he  is  about  or  whether 
he  goes  through  certain  motions  while  mouthing  the 
words  of  others — repetition  of  formulas  being  esteemed 
of  greater  importance,  upon  the  whole,  than  repetition 
of  deeds.  To  say  what  the  sect  or  clique  or  class  says 
is  the  way  of  proving  that  one  also  understands  and 
approves  what  the  clique  clings  to.  In  theory,  democ- 
racy should  be  a  means  of  stimulating  original  thought, 


66  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

and  of  evoking  action  deliberately  adjusted  in  advance 
to  cope  with  new  forces.  In  fact  it  is  still  so  immature 
that  its  main  effect  is  to  multiply  occasions  for  imita- 
tion. If  progress  in  spite  of  this  fact  is  more  rapid 
than  in  other  social  forms,  it  is  by  accident,  since  the 
diversity  of  models  conflict  with  one  another  and 
thus  give  individuality  a  chance  in  the  resulting  chaos 
of  opinions.  Current  democracy  acclaims  success  more 
boisterously  than  do  other  social  forms,  and  surrounds 
failure  with  a  more  reverberating  train  of  echoes.  But 
the  prestige  thus  given  excellence  is  largely  adventi- 
tious. The  achievement  of  thought  attracts  others  not 
so  much  intrinsically  as  because  of  an  eminence  due  to 
multitudinous  advertising  and  a  swarm  of  imitators. 

Even  liberal  thinkers  have  treated  habit  as  essen- 
tially, not  because  of  the  character  of  existing  customs, 
conservative.  In  fact  only  in  a  society  dominated  by 
modes  of  belief  and  admiration  fixed  by  past  custom  is 
habit  any  more  conservative  than  it  is  progressive.  It 
all  depends  upon  its  quality.  Habit  is  an  ability,  an 
art,  formed  through  past  experience.  But  whether  an 
ability  is  limited  to  repetition  of  past  acts  adopted  to 
past  conditions  or  is  available  for  new  emergencies 
depends  wholly  upon  what  kind  of  habit  exists.  The 
tendency  to  think  that  only  "  bad "  habits  are  dis- 
serviceable  and  that  bad  habits  are  conventionally 
°numerable,  conduces  to  make  all  habits  more  or  less 
bad.  For  what  makes  a  habit  bad  is  enslavement  to 
old  ruts.  The  common  notion  that  enslavement  to  good 
ends  converts  mechanical  routine  into  good  is  a 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  67 

negation  of  the  principle  of  moral  goodness.  It  iden- 
tifies morality  with  what  was  sometime  rational,  pos- 
sibly in  some  prior  experience  of  one's  own,  but  more 
probably  in  the  experience  of  some  one  else  who  is  now 
blindly  set  up  as  a  final  authority.  The  genuine  heart 
of  reasonableness  (and  of  goodness  in  conduct)  lies 
in  effective  mastery  of  the  conditions  which  now  enter 
into  action.  To  be  satisfied  with  repeating,  with  trav- 
ersing the  ruts  which  in  other  conditions  led  to  good, 
is  the  surest  way  of  creating  carelessness  about  present 
and  actual  good. 

Consider  what  happens  to  thought  when  habit  is 
merely  power  to  repeat  acts  without  thought.  Where 
does  thought  exist  and  operate  when  it  is  excluded  from 
habitual  activities?  Is  not  such  thought  of  necessity 
shut  out  from  effective  power,  from  ability  to  control 
objects  and  command  events?  Habits  deprived  of 
thought  and  thought  which  is  futile  are  two  sides  of  the 
same  fact.  To  laud  habit  as  conservative  while  prais- 
ing thought  as  the  main  spring  of  progress  is  to  take 
the  surest  course  to  making  thought  abstruse  and 
irrelevant  and  progress  a  matter  of  accident  and  catas- 
trophe. The  concrete  fact  behind  the  current  separa- 
tion of  body  and  mind,  practice  and  theory,  actualities 
and  ideals,  is  precisely  this  separation  of  habit  and 
thought.  Thought  which  does  not  exist  within  ordinary 
jhifl.frit.s  of  ftction  lacks  means  of  execution.  In  lacking 
application,  it  also  lacks  test,  criterion.  Hence  it  is 
condemned  to  a  separate  realm.  If  we  try  to  act  upon 
it,  our  actions  are  clumsy,  forced.  In  fact,  contrary 


68  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

habits  (as  we  have  already  seen)  come  into  operation 
and  betray  our  purpose.  After  a  few  such  experiences, 
it  is  subconsciously  decided  that  thought  is  too  precious 
and  high  to  be  exposed  to  the  contingencies  of  action. 
It  is  reserved  for  separate  uses;  thought  feeds  only 
thought  not  action.  Ideals  must  not  run  the  risk  of 
contamination  and  perversion  by  contact  with  actual 
conditions.  Thought  then  either  resorts  to  specialized 
and  technical  matters  influencing  action  in  the  library 
or  laboratory  alone,  or  else  it  becomes  sentimentalized. 
Meantime  there  are  certain  "  practical  "  men  who 
combine  thought  and  habit  and  who  are  effectual.  Their 
thought  is  about  their  own  advantage ;  and  their  habits 
correspond.  They  dominate  the  actual  situation.  They 
encourage  routine  in  others,  and  they  also  subsidize 
such  thought  and  learning  as  are  kept  remote  from 
affairs.  This  they  call  sustaining  the  standard  of  the 
ideal.  Subjection  they  praise  as  team-spirit,  loyalty, 
devotion,  obedience,  industry,  law-and-order.  But  they 
temper  respect  for  law — by  which  they  mean  the  order 
of  the  existing  status — on  the  part  of  others  with  most 
skilful  and  thoughtful  manipulation  of  it  in  behalf  of 
their  own  ends.  While  they  denounce  as  subversive 
anarchy  signs  of  independent  thought,  of  thinking  for 
themselves,  on  the  part  of  others  lest  such  thought 
disturb  the  conditions  by  which  they  profit,  they  think 
quite  literally  for  themselves,  that  is,  of  themselves. 
This  is  the  eternal  game  of  the  practical  men.  Hence 
it  is  only  by  accident  that  the  separate  and  endowed 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  69 

*  thought  "  of  professional  thinkers  leaks  out  into  ac- 
tion and  affects  custom. 

For  thinking  cannot  itself  escape  the  influence  of 
habit,  any  more  than  anything  else  human.  If  it  is  not 
a  part  of  ordinary  habits,  then  it  is  a  separate  habit, 
habit  alongside  other  habits,  apart  from  them,  as 
isolated  and  indurated  as  human  structure  permits. 
Theory  is  a  possession  of  the  theorist,  intellect  of  the 
intellectualist.  The  so-called  separation  of  theory  and 
practice  means  in  fact  the  separation  of  two  kinds  of 
practice,  one  taking  place  in  the  outdoor  world,  the 
other  in  the  study.  The  habit  of  thought  commands 
some  materials  (as  every  habit  must  do)  but  the  ma- 
terials are  technical,  books,  words.  Ideas  are  objecti- 
fied in  action  but  speech  and  writing  monopolize  their 
field  of  action.  Even  then  subconscious  pains  are 
taken  to  see  that  the  words  used  are  not  too  widely 
understood.  Intellectual  habits  like  other  habits  de- 
mand an  environment,  but  the  environment  is  the  study, 
library,  laboratory  and  academy.  Like  other  habits 
they  produce  external  results,  possessions.  Some  men 
acquire  ideas  and  knowledge  as  other  men  acquire  mon- 
etary wealth.  While  practising  thought  for  their  own 
special  ends  they  deprecate  it  for  the  untrained  and 
unstable  masses  for  whom  "  habits,"  that  is  unthinking 
routines,  are  necessities.  They  favor  popular  educa- 
tion— up  to  the  point  of  disseminating  as  matter  of 
authoritative  information  for  the  many  what  the  few 
have  established  by  thought,  and  up  to  the  point  of 


70  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

converting  an  original  docility  to  the  new  into  a  docility 
to  repeat  and  to  conform. 

Yet  all  habit  involves  mechanization.  Habit  is  im- 
possible without  setting  up  a  mechanism  of  action, 
physiologically  engrained,  which  operates  "  spontane- 
ously," automatically,  whenever  the  cue  is  given.  But 
mechanization  is  not  of  necessity  all  there  is  to  habit. 
Consider  the  conditions  under  which  the  first  serviceable 
abilities  of  life  are  formed.  When  a  child  begins  to 
walk  he  acutely  observes,  he  intently  and  intensely  ex- 
periments. He  looks  to  see  what  is  going  to  happen 
and  he  keeps  curious  watch  on  every  incident.  What 
others  do,  the  assistance  they  give,  the  models  they  set, 
operate  not  as  limitations  but  as  encouragements  to  his 
own  acts,  reinforcements  of  personal  perception  and 
endeavor.  The  first  toddling  is  a  romantic  adventur- 
ing into  the  unknown;  and  every  gained  power  is  a 
delightful  discovery  of  one's  own  powers  and  of  the 
wonders  of  the  world.  We  may  not  be  able  to  retain 
in  adult  habits  this  zest  of  intelligence  and  this 
freshness  of  satisfaction  in  newly  discovered  powers. 
But  there  is  surely  a  middle  term  between  a  normal 
exercise  of  power  which  includes  some  excursion  into 
the  unknown,  and  a  mechanical  activity  hedged  within 
a  drab  world.  Even  in  dealing  with  inanimate  machines 
we  rank  that  invention  higher  which  adapts  its  move- 
ments to  varying  conditions. 

All  life  operates  through  a  mechanism,  and  the 
higher  the  form  of  life  the  more  complex,  sure  and 
flexible  the  mechanism.  This  fact  alone  should  save 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  71 

us  from  opposing  life  and  mechanism,  thereby  reducing 
the  latter  to  unintelligent  automatism  and  the  former 
to  an  aimless  splurge.  How  delicate,  prompt,  sure  and 
varied  are  the  movements  of  a  violin  player  or  an  en- 
graver! How  unerringly  they  phrase  every  shade  of 
emotion  and  every  turn  of  idea!  Mechanism  is  indis- 
pensable. If  each  act  has  to  be  consciously  searched 
for  at  the  moment  and  intentionally  performed,  exe- 
cution is  painful  and  the  product  is  clumsy  and  halting. 
Nevertheless  the  difference  between  the  artist  and  the 
mere  technician  is  unmistakeable.  The  artist  is  a  mas- 
terful technician.  The  technique  or  mechanism  is  fused 
with  thought  and  feeling.  The  "  mechanical "  per- 
former permits  the  mechanism  to  dictate  the  perform- 
ance. It  is  absurd  to  say  that  the  latter  exhibits  habit 
and  the  former  not.  We  are  confronted  with  two  kinds 
of  habit,  intelligent  and  routine.  All  life  has  its  elan, 
but  only  the  prevalence  of  dead  habits  deflects  life  into 
mere  elan. 

Yet  the  current  dualism  of  mind  and  body,  thought 
and  action,  is  so  rooted  that  we  are  taught  ( and  science 
is  said  to  support  the  teaching)  that  the  art,  the  habit, 
of  the  artist  is  acquired  by  previous  mechanical  exer- 
cises of  repetition  in  which  skill  apart  from  thought  is 
the  aim,  until  suddenly,  magically,  this  soulless  mechan- 
ism is  taken  possession  of  by  sentiment  and  imagination 
and  it  becomes  a  flexible  instrument  of  mind.  The  fact, 
the  scientific  fact,  is  that  even  in  his  exercises,  his  prac- 
tice for  skill,  an  artist  uses  an  art  he  already  has.  He 
acquires  greater  skill  because  practice  of  skill  is  more 


72  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

important  to  him  than  practice  for  skill.  Otherwise 
natural  endowment  would  count  for  nothing,  and 
sufficient  mechanical  exercise  would  make  any  one 
an  expert  in  any  field.  A  flexible,  sensitive  habit  grows 
more  varied,  more  adaptable  by  practice  and  use.  We 
do  not  as  yet  fully  understand  the  physiological  fac- 
tors concerned  in  mechanical  routine  on  one  hand  and 
artistic  skill  on  the  other,  but  we  do  know  that  the 
latter  is  just  as  much  habit  as  is  the  former. 
Whether  it  concerns  the  cook,  musician,  carpenter,  cit- 
izen, or  statesman,  the  intelligent  or  artistic  habit  is 
the  desirable  thing,  and  the  routine  the  undesirable 
thing: — or,  at  least,  desirable  and  undesirable  from 
every  point  of  view  except  one. 

Those  who  wish  a  monopoly  of  social  power  find 
desirable  the  separation  of  habit  and  thought,  action 
and  soul,  so  characteristic  of  history.  For  the  dualism 
enables  them  to  do  the  thinking  and  planning,  while 
others  remain  the  docile,  even  if  awkward,  instruments 
of  execution.  Until  this  scheme  is  changed,  democracy 
is  bound  to  be  perverted  in  realization.  With  our 
present  system  of  education — by  which  something  much 
more  extensive  than  schooling  is  meant — democracy 
multiplies  occasions  for  imitation  not  occasions  for 
thought  in  action.  If  the  visible  result  is  rather  a 
messy  confusion  than  an  ordered  discipline  of  habits,  it 
is  because  there  are  so  many  models  of  imitation  set  up 
tliat  they  tend  to  cancel  one  another,  so  that  individ- 
uals have  the  advantage  neither  of  uniform  training 
nor  of  intelligent  adaptation.  Whence  an  intellectu- 


CUSTOM  AND  HABIT  73 

alist,  the  one  with  whom  thinking  is  itself  a  segregated 
habit,  infers  that  the  choice  is  between  muss-and- 
muddling  and  a  bureaucracy.  He  prefers  the  latter, 
though  under  some  other  name,  usually  an  aristocracy 
of  talent  and  intellect,  possibly  a  dictatorship  of  the 
proletariat. 

It  has  been  repeatedly  stated  that  the  current  philo- 
sophical dualism  of  mind  and  body,  of  spirit  and  mere 
outward  doing,  is  ultimately  but  an  intellectual  reflex 
of  the  social  divorce  of  routine  habit  from  thought,  of 
means  from  ends,  practice  from  theory.  One  hardly 
knows  whether  most  to  admire  the  acumen  with  which 
Bergson  has  penetrated  through  the  accumulation  of 
historic  technicalities  to  this  essential  fact,  or  to  de- 
plore the  artistic  skill  with  which  he  has  recommended 
the  division  and  the  metaphysical  subtlety  with  which 
he  has  striven  to  establish  its  necessary  and  unchange- 
able nature.  For  the  latter  tends  to  confirm  and  sanc- 
tion the  dualism  in  all  its  obnoxiousness.  In  the  end, 
however,  detection,  discovery,  is  the  main  thing.  To 
envisage  the  relation  of  spirit,  life,  to  matter,  body, 
as  in  effect  an  affair  of  a  force  which  outruns  habit 
while  it  leaves  a  trail  of  routine  habits  behind  it,  will 
surely  turn  out  in  the  end  to  imply  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  need  of  a  continuous  unification  of  spirit 
and  habit,  rather  than  to  be  a  sanction  of  their  di- 
vorce. And  when  Bergson  carries  the  implicit  logic 
to  the  point  of  a  clear  recognition  that  upon  this  basis 
concrete  intelligence  is  concerned  with  the  habits 
which  incorporate  and  deal  with  objects,  and  that  noth- 


74     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ing  remains  to  spirit,  pure  thought,  except  a  blind  on- 
ward push  or  impetus,  the  net  conclusion  is  surely  the 
need  of  revision  of  the  fundamental  premiss  of  sepa- 
ration of  soul  and  habit.  A  blind  creative  force  is  as 
likely  to  turn  out  to  be  destructive  as  creative ;  the  vital 
elan  may  delight  in  war  rather  than  in  the  laborious 
arts  of  civilization,  and  a  mystic  intuition  of  an  ungoing 
splurge  be  a  poor  substitute  for  the  detailed  work  of  an 
intelligence  embodied  in  custom  and  institution,  one 
which  creates  by  means  of  flexible  continuous  contriv- 
ances of  reorganization.  For  the  eulogistic  qualities 
which  Bergson  attributes  to  the  elan  vital  flow  not  from 
its  nature  but  from  a  reminiscence  of  the  optimism  of 
romanticism,  an  optimism  which  is  only  the  reverse  side 
of  pessimism  about  actualities.  A  spiritual  life  which 
is  nothing  but  a  blind  urge  separated  from  thought 
(which  is  said  to  be  confined  to  mechanical  ma- 
nipulation of  material  objects  for  personal  uses)  is 
likely  to  have  the  attributes  of  the  Devil  in  spite  of  its 
being  ennobled  with  the  name  of  God. 


For  practical  purposes  morals  mean  customs,  folk- 
ways, established  collective  habits.  This  is  a  common- 
place of  the  anthropologist,  though  the  moral  theorist 
generally  suffers  from  an  illusion  that  his  own  place 
and  day  is,  or  ought  to  be,  an  exception.  But  always 
and  everywhere  customs  supply  the  standards  for  per- 
sonal activities.  They  are  the  pattern  into  which  in- 
dividual activity  must  weave  itself.  This  is  as  true 
today  as  it  ever  was.  But  because  of  present  mobility 
and  interminglings  of  customs,  an  individual  is  now 
offered  an  enormous  range  of  custom-patterns,  and  can 
exercise  personal  ingenuity  in  selecting  and  rearranging 
their  elements.  In  short  he  can,  if  he  will,  intelligently 
adapt  customs  to  conditions,  and  thereby  remake  them. 
Customs  in  any  case  constitute  moral  standards.  For 
they  are  active  demands  for  certain  ways  of  acting. 
Every  habit  creates  an  unconscious  expectation.  It 
forms  a  certain  outlook.  What  psychologists  have  la- 
boriously treated  under  the  caption  of  association  of 
ideas  has  little  to  do  with  ideas  and  everything  to  do 
with  the  influence  of  habit  upon  recollection  and  per- 
ception. A  habit,  a  routine  habit,  when  interfered  with 
generates  uneasiness,  sets  up  a  protest  in  favor  of 
restoration  and  a  sense  of  need  of  some  expiatory  act> 
or  else  it  goes  off  in  casual  reminiscence.  It  is  the 

75 


76  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

essence  of  routine  to  insist  upon  its  own  continuation. 
Breach  of  it  is  violation  of  right.  Deviation  from  it 
is  transgression. 

All  that  metaphysics  has  said  about  the  nisus  of 
Being  to  conserve  its  essence  and  all  that  a  mytho- 
logical psychology  has  said  about  a  special  instinct  of 
self-preservation  is  a  cover  for  the  persistent  self- 
assertion  of  habit.  Habit  is  energy  organized  in  cer- 
tain channels.  When  interfered  with,  it  swells  as  re- 
sentment and  as  an  avenging  force.  To  say  that  it 
will  be  obeyed,  that  custom  makes  law,  that  nomos  is 
lord  of  all,  is  after  all  only  to  say  that  habit  is  habit. 
Emotion  is  a  perturbation  from  clash  or  failure  of 
habit,  and  reflection,  roughly  speaking,  is  the  painful 
effort  of  disturbed  habits  to  readjust  themselves.  It 
is  a  pity  that  Westermarck  in  his  monumental  collec- 
tion of  facts  which  show  the  connection  of  custom  with 
morals*  is  still  so  much  under  the  influence  of  current 
subjective  psychology  that  he  misstates  the  point  of 
his  data.  For  although  he  recognizes  the  objectivity 
of  custom,  he  treats  sympathetic  resentment  and  ap- 
probation as  distinctive  inner  feelings  or  conscious 
states  which  give  rise  to  acts.  In  his  anxiety  to  dis- 
place an  unreal  rational  source  of  morals  he  sets  up  an 
equally  unreal  emotional  basis.  In  truth,  feelings  as 
well  as  reason  spring  up  within  action.  Breach  of  cus- 
tom or  habit  is  the  source  of  sympathetic  resentment, 
while  overt  approbation  goes  out  to  fidelity  to  custom 
maintained  under  exceptional  circumstances. 

*  "  The  Origin  and  Development  of  Moral  Ideas." 


CUSTOM  AND  MORALITY  77 

Those  who  recognize  the  place  of  custom  in  lower 
social  forms  generally  regard  its  presence  in  civilized 
society  as  a  mere  survival.  Or,  like  Sumner,  they  fancy 
that  to  recognize  its  abiding  place  is  equivalent  to  the 
denial  of  all  rationality  and  principle  to  morality; 
equivalent  to  the  assertion  of  blind,  arbitrary  forces 
in  life.  In  effect,  this  point  of  view  has  already 
been  dealt  with.  It  overlooks  the  fact  that  the  real 
opposition  is  not  between  reason  and  habit  but  between 
routine,  unintelligent  habit,  and  intelligent  habit  or 
art.  Even  a  savage  custom  may  be  reasonable  in  that 
it  is  adapted  to  social  needs  and  uses.  Experience  may 
add  to^  such  adaptation  a  conscious  recognition  of  ii^ 
and  then  the  custom  of^rationalityis  added  to  a  prior 
custom. 

External  reasonableness  or  adaptation  to  ends  pre- 
cedes  reasonableness  of  mind.  This  is  only  to  say  that 
in  morals  as  well  as  in  physics  things  have  to  be  there 
before  we  perceive  them,  and  that  rationality  of  mind 
is  not  an  original  endowment  but  is  the  offspring  of 
intercourse  with  objective  adaptations  and  relations — 
a  view  which  under  the  influence  of  a  conception  of 
knowing  the  like  by  the  like  has  been  distorted  into 
Platonic  and  other  objective  idealisms.  Reason  as 
observation  of  an  adaptation  of  acts  to  valuable  re- 
sults is  not  however  a  mere  idle  mirroring  of  pre- 
existent  facts.  It  is  an  additional  event  having  its  own 
career.  It  sets  up  a  heightened  emotional  appreciation 
and  provides  a  new  motive  for  fidelities  previously  blind. 
It  sets  up  an  attitude  of  criticism,  of  inquiry,  and 


78     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

makes  men  sensitive  to  the  brutalities  and  extrava- 
gancies of  customs.  In  short,  it  becomes  a  custom  of 
expectation  and  outlook,  an  active  demand  for  reason- 
ableness in  other  customs.  The  reflective  disposition  is 
not  self-made  nor  a  gift  of  the  gods.  It  arises  in  some 
exceptional  circumstance  out  of  social  customs,  as  we 
see  in  the  case  of  the  Greeks.  But  when  it  has  been 
generated  it  establishes  a  new  custom,  which  is  capable 
of  exercising  the  most  revolutionary  influence  upon 
other  customs. 

Hence  the  growing  importance  of  personal  ration- 
ality or  intelligence,  in  moral  theory  if  not  in  practice. 
That  current  customs  contradict  one  another,  that 
many  of  them  are  unjust,  and  that  without  criticism 
none  of  them  is  fit  to  ^Q  th^-figiide  of  life  was  the  dis- 
covery with  which  the  Athenian  Socrates  initiated  con- 
scious moral  theorizing.  Yet  a  dilemma  soon  presented 
itself,  one  which  forms  the  burden  of  Plato's  ethical 
writings.  How  shall  thought  which  is  personal  arrive 
at  standards  which  hold  good  for  all,  which,  in  modern 
phrase,  are  objective?  The  solution  found  by  Plato 
was  that  reason  is  itself  objective,  universal,  cosmic 
and  makes  the  individual  soul  its  vehicle.  The  result, 
however,  was  merely  to  substitute  a  metaphysical  or 
transcendental  ethics  for  the  ethics  of  custom.  If  Plato 
had  been  able  to  see  that  reflection  and  criticism  express 
a  conflict  of  customs,  and  that  their  purport  and  office 
is  to  re-organize,  re-adjust  customs,  the  subsequent 
course  of  moral  theory  would  have  been  very  different. 
Custom  would  have  provided  needed  objective  and  sub- 


CUSTOM  AND  MORALITY  79 

stantial  ballast,  and  personal  rationality  or  reflective 
intelligence  been  treated  as  the  necessary  organ  of 
experimental  initiative  and  creative  invention  in  re- 
making custom. 

We  have  another  difficulty  to  face:  a  greater  wave 
rises  to  overwhelm  us.  It  is  said  that  to  derive  moral 
standards  from  social  customs  is  to  evacuate  the  latter 
of  all  authority.  Morals,  it  is  said,  imply  the  subordi- 
nation of  fact  to  ideal  consideration,  while  the  view  pre- 
sented makes  morals  secondary  to  bare  fact,  which  is 
equal  to  depriving  them  of  dignity  and  jurisdiction. 
The  objection  has  the  force  of  the  custom  of  moral 
theorists  behind  it;  and  therefore  in  its  denial  of  cus- 
tom avails  itself  of  the  assistance  of  the  notion  it  at- 
tacks. The  criticism  rests  upon  a  false  separation. 
It  argues  in  effect  that  either  ideal  standards  antecede 
customs  and  confer  their  moral  quality  upon  them,  or 
that  in  being  subsequent  to  custom  and  evolved  from 
them,  they  are  mere  accidental  by-products.  But  how 
does  the  case  stand  with  language?  Men  did  not  in- 
tend language;  they  did  not  have  social  objects  con- 
sciously in  view  when  they  began  to  talk,  nor  did  they 
have  grammatical  and  phonetic  principles  before  them 
by  which  to  regulate  their  efforts  at  communication. 
These  things  come  after  the  fact  and  because  of  it. 
Language  grew  out  of  unintelligent  babblings^Jnstinc- 
tive  motions  called  gestures,  and  the  pressure  of  circum- 
stance. But  nevertheless  language  once  called  into  ex- 
istence is  language  and  operates  as  language.  It  op- 
crates  not  to  perpetuate  the  forces  which  produced 


-  j  i  / 

itl 


80     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

but  to  modify  and  redirect  them.  It  has  such  tran- 
scendent importance  that  pains  are  taken  with  its  use. 
Literatures  are  produced,  and  then  a  vast  apparatus 
of  grammar,  rhetoric,  dictionaries,  literary  criticism, 
reviews,  essays,  a  derived  literature  ad  lib.  Education, 
schooling,  becomes  a  necessity;  literacy  an  end.  In 
short  language  when  it  is  produced  meets  old  needs  and 
opens  new  possibilities.  It  creates  demands  which  take 
effect,  and  the  effect  is  not  confined  to  speech  ami  lit- 
erature, but  extends  to  the  common  life  in  communi- 
cation, counsel  and  instruction. 

What  is  said  of  the  institution  of  language  holds 
good  of  every  institution.  Family  life,  property,  legal 
forms,  churches  and  schools,  academies  of  art  and  sci- 
ence did  not  originate  to  serve  conscious  ends  nor  was 
their  generation  regulated  by  consciousness  of  prin- 
ciples of  reason  and  right.  Yet  each  institution  has 
brought  with  its  development  demands,  expectations, 
rules,  standards.  These  are  not  mere  embellishments 
of  the  forces  which  produced  them,  idle  decorations  of 
the  scene.  They  are  additional  forces.  They  recon- 
struct. They  open  new  avenues  of  endeavor  and  impose 
new  labors.  In  short  they  are  civilization,  culture, 
morality. 

Still  the  question  recurs :  What  authority  have  stand- 
ards and  ideas  which  have  originated  in  this  way? 
What  claim  have  they  upon  us?  In  one  sense 
the  question  is  unanswerable.  In  the  same  sense, 
however,  the  question  is  unanswerable  whatever 
origin  and  sanction  is  ascribed  to  moral  obligations 


CUSTOM  AND  MORALITY  81 

and  loyalties.  Why  attend  to  metaphysical  and 
transcendental  ideal  realities  even  if  we  concede  they 
are  the  authors  of  moral  standards?  Why  do  this  act 
if  I  feel  like  doing  something  else?  Any  moral  question 
may  reduce  itself  to  this  question  if  we  so  choose. 
But  in  an  empirical  sense  the  answer  is  simple.  The 
authority  is  that  of  life.  Why  employ  language,  cul- 
tivate literature,  acquire  and  develop  science,  sustain 
industry,  and  submit  to  the  refinements  of  art?  To 
ask  these  questions  is  equivalent  to  asking:  Why  live? 
And  the  only  answer  is  that  if  one  is  going  to  live  one 
must  live  a  life  of  which  these  things  form  the  sub- 
stance. The  only  question  having  sense  which  can  be 
asked  is  how  we  are  going  to  use  and  be  used  by  these 
things,  not  whether  we  are  going  to  use  them.  Reason, 
moral  principles,  cannot  in  any  case  be  shoved  behind 
these  affairs,  for  reason  and  morality  grow  out  of  them. 
But  they  have  grown  into  them  as  well  as  out  of  them. 
They  are  there  as  part  of  them.  No  one  can  escape 
them  if  he  wants  to.  He  cannot  escape  the  problem 
of  how  to  engage  in  life,  since  in  any  case  he  must  en- 
gage in  it  in  some  way  or  other — or  else  quit  and  get 
out.  In  short,  the  choice  is  not  between  a  moral  author- 
ity outside  custom  and  one  within  it.  It  is  between 
adopting  more  or  less  intelligent  and  significant 
customs. 

Curiously  enough,  the  chief  practical  effect  of  re- 
fusing to  recognize  the  connection  of  custom  with  moral 
standards  is  to  deify  some  special  custom  and  treat  it 
as  eternal,  immutable,  outside  of  criticism  and  revision. 


82     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

This  consequence  is  especially  harmful  in  times  of  rapid 
social  flux.  For  it  leads  to  disparity  between  nominal 
standards,  which  become  ineffectual  and  hypocritical  in 
exact  ratio  to  their  theoretical  exaltation,  and  actual 
habits  which  have  to  take  note  of  existing  condi- 
tions. The  disparity  breeds  disorder.  Irregularity 
and  confusion  are  however  practically  intolerable,  and 
effect  the  generation  of  a  new  rule  of  some  sort  or 
other.  Only  such  complete  disturbance  of  the  physical 
bases  of  life  and  security  as  comes  from  plague  and 
starvation  can  throw  society  into  utter  disorder.  No 
amount  of  intellectual  transition  can  seriously  disturb 
the  main  tenor  of  custom,  or  morals.  Hence  the 
greater  danger  which  attends  the  attempt  in  period  of 
social  change  to  maintain  the  immutability  of  old 
standards  is  not  general  moral  relaxation.  It  is  rather 
social  clash,  an  irreconciled  conflict  of  moral  standards 
and  purposes,  the  most  serious  form  of  class  warfare. 

For  segregated  classes  develop  their  own  customs, 
which  is  to  say  their  own  working  morals.  As  long  as 
society  is  mainly  immobile  these  diverse  principles  and 
ruling  aims  do  not  clash.  They  exist  side  by  side  in 
different  strata.  Power,  glory,  honor,  magnificence, 
mutual  faith  here;  industry,  obedience,  abstinence, 
humility,  and  reverence  there:  noble  and  plebeian  vir- 
tues. Vigor,  courage,  energy,  enterprise  here;  sub- 
mission, patience,  charm,  personal  fidelity  there:  the 
masculine  and  feminine  virtues.  But  mobility  invades 
society.  War,  commerce,  travel,  communication,  con- 
tact with  the  thoughts  and  desires  of  other  classes,  new 


CUSTOM  AND  MORALITY  83 

inventions  in  productive  industry,  disturb  the  settled 
distribution  of  customs.  Congealed  habits  thaw  out, 
and  a  flood  mixes  things  once  separated. 

Each  class  is  rigidly  sure  of  the  Tightness  of  its  own 
ends  and  hence  not  overscrupulous  about  the  means  of 
attaining  them.  One  side  proclaims  the  ultimacy  of 
order — that  of  some  old  order  which  conduces  to  its 
own  interest.  The  other  side  proclaims  its  rights  to 
freedom,  and  identifies  justice  with  its  submerged 
claims.  .There  is  no  common  ground,  no  moral  under- 
standing, no  agreed  upon  standard  of  appeal.  Today 
such  a  conflict  occurs  between  propertied  classes  and 
those  who  depend  upon  daily  wage;  between  men  and 
women;  between  old  and  young.  Each  appeals  to  its 
own  standard  of  right,  and  each  thinks  the  other  the 
creature  of  personal  desire,  whim  or  obstinacy.  Mobil- 
ity has  affected  peoples  as  well.  Nations  and  races 
;face  one  another,  each  with  its  own  immutable  stand- 
ards. Never  before  in  history  have  there  existed  such 
[numerous  contacts  and  minglings.  Never  before  have 
there  been  such  occasions  for  conflict  which  are  the 
more  significant  because  each  side  feels  that  it  is  sup- 
ported by  moral  principles.  Customs  relating  to  what 
has  been  and  emotions  referring  to  what  may  come  to 
be  go  their  independent  ways.  The  demand  of  each  side 
treats  its  opponent  as  a  wilful  violator  of  moral  princi- 
ples, an  expression  of  self-interest  or  superior  might. 
Intelligence  which  is  the  only  possible  messenger  of 
reconciliation  dwells  in  a  far  land  of  abstractions  or 
comes  after  the  event  to  record  accomplished  facts. 


VI 


The  prior  discussion  has  tried  to  show  why  the  psy- 
chology of  habit  is  an  objective  and  social  psychology. 
Settled  and  regular  action  must  contain  an  adjustment 
of  environing  conditions ;  it  must  incorporate  them  in 
itself.  For  human  beings,  the  environing  affairs  di- 
rectly important  are  those  formed  by  the  activities  of 
other  human  beings.  This  fact  is  accentuated  and 
made  fundamental  by  the  fact  of  infancy — the  fact 
that  each  human  being  begins  life  completely  depend- 
ent upon  others.  The  net  outcome  accordingly  is  that 
what  can  be  called  distinctively  individual  in  behavior 
and  mind  is  not,  contrary  to  traditional  theory,  an 
original  datum.  Doubtless  physical  or  physiological 
individuality  always  colors  responsive  activity  and 
hence  modifies  the  form  which  custom  assumes  in  its 
personal  reproductions.  In  forceful  energetic  char- 
acters this  quality  is  marked.  But  it  is  important  to 
note  that  it  is  a  quality  of  habit,  not  an  element  or 
force  existing  apart  from  adjustment  of  the  en- 
vironment and  capable  of  being  termed  a  separate  in- 
dividual mind.  Orthodox  psychology  starts  however 
from  the  assumption  of  precisely  such  independent 
minds.  However  much  different  schools  may  vary  in 
their  definitions  of  mind,  they  agree  in  this  premiss 
of  separateness  and  priority.  Hence  social  psychology 

84 


HABIT  AND  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY  85 

is  confused  by  the  effort  to  render  its  facts  in  the  terms 
characteristic  of  old  psychology,  when  the  distinctive 
thing  about  it  is  that  it  implies  an  abandonment  of  that 
psychology. 

The  traditional  psychology  of  the  original  separate 
soul,  mind  or  consciousness  is  in  truth  a  reflex  of  con- 
ditions which  cut  human  nature  off  from  its  natural 
objective  relations.      It  implies  first   the  severance  of] 
man  from  nature  and  then  of  each  man  from  his  fel-l 
lows.     The  isolation  of  man  from  nature  is  duly  mani- 
fested in  the  split  between  mind  and  body — since  body 
is  clearly  a  connected  part  of  nature.     Thus  the  instru- 
ment of  action  and  the  means  of  the  continuous  modi-         » 
fication  of  action,  of  the  cumulative  carrying  forward     KJ> 
of  old  activity  into  new,  is  regarded  as  a  mysterious^/*    ^\> 
intruder  or  as   a   mysterious  parallel   accompaniment. 
It  is  fair  to  say  that  the  psychology  of  a  separate  and 
independent    consciousness    began    ag_  an    intellectual  i 
formulation  of  those  facts  of  morality  which  treated/ 
the  most  important  kind  of  action  as  a  j>rivate  c 
cern,  something  to  be  enacted   and   concluded  within 
character  as   a_purely  personal  possession.     The  re- 
ligious  and  metaphysical  interests  which  wanted   the 
ideal  to  be  a  separate  realm  finally  coincided  with  a 
practical  revolt  against  current  customs  and  institu- 
tions to   enforce   current  psychological  individualism. 
But  this  formulation  (put  forth  in  the  name  of  science)/ 
reacted  to  confirm  the  conditions  out  of  which  it  arose, 
and  to  convert  it  from  a  historic  episode  into  an  essen- 
tial truth.    Its  exaggeration  of  individuality  is  largely 


86     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

a  compensatory  reaction  against  the  pressure  of  insti- 
tutional rigidities. 

Any  moral  theory  which  is  seriously  influenced  by 
current  psychological  theory  is  bound  to  emphasize 
states  of  consciousness,  an  inner  private  life,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  acts  which  have  public  meaning  and  which 
incorporate  and  exact  social  relationships.  A  psy- 
chology based  upon  habits  (and  instincts  which  become 
elements  in  habits  as  soon  as  they  are  acted  upon)  will 
on  the  contrary  fix  its  attention  upon  the  objective 
conditions  in  which  habits  are  formed  and  operate.  The 
rise  at  the  present  time  of  a  clinical  psychology  which 
revolts  at  traditional  and  orthodox  psychology  is  a 
symptom  of  ethical  import.  It  is  a  protest  against  the 
futility,  as  a  tool  of  understanding  and  dealing  with 
human  nature  in  the  concrete,  of  the  psychology  of 
conscious  sensations,  images  and  ideas.  It  exhibits  a 
sense  for  reality  in  its  insistence  upon  the  profound 
importance  of  unconscious  forces  in  determining  not 
only  overt  conduct  but  desire,  judgment,  belief,  ideal- 
ization. 

Every  moment  of  reaction  and  protest,  however, 
usually  accepts  some  of  the  basic  ideas  of  the  position 
against  which  it  rebels.  So  the  most  popular  forms  of 
the  clinical  psychology,  those  associated  with  the 
founders  of  psycho-analysis,  retain  the  notion  of  a  sep- 
arate psychic  realm  or  force.  They  add  a  statement 
pointing  to  facts  of  the  utmost  value,  and  which  is 
equivalent  to  practical  recognition  of  the  dependence  of 


HABIT  AND  SOCIAL  PSYCHOLOGY          87 

mind  upon  habit  and  of  habit  upon  social  conditions. 
This  is  the  statement  of  the  existence  and  operation  of 
the  "  unconscious,"  of  complexes  due  to  contacts  and 
conflicts  with  others,  of  the  social  censor.  But  they  still 
cling  to  the  idea  of  the  separate  psychic  realm  and  so 
in  effect  talk  about  unconscious  consciousness.  They 
get  their  truths  mixed  up  in  theory  with  the  false  psy- 
chology of  original  individual  consciousness,  just  as 
the  school  of  social  psychologists  does  upon  its  side. 
Their  elaborate  artificial  explanations,  like  the  mystic 
collective  mind,  consciousness,  over-soul,  of  social  psy- 
chology, are  due  to  failure  to  begin  with  the  facts  of 
habit  and  custom. 

What  then  is  meant  by  individual  mind,  by  mind  as 
individual?  In  effect  the  reply  has  already  been  given. 
Conflict  of  habits  releases  impulsive  activities  which  in 
their  manifestation  require  a  modification  of  habit,  of 
custom  and  convention.  That  which  was  at  first  the  in- 
dividualized color  or  quality  of  habitual  activity  is  ab- 
stracted, and  becomes  a  center  of  activity  aiming  to 
reconstruct  customs  in  accord  with  some  desire  which 
is  rejected  by  the  immediate  situation  and  which  there- 
fore is  felt  to  belong  to  one's  self,  to  be  the  mark  and 
possession  of  an  individual  in  partial  and  temporary 
opposition  to  his  environment.  These  general  and  nec- 
essarily vague  statements  will  be  made  more  definite  in 
the  further  discussion  of  impulse  and  intelligence.  For 
impulse  when  it  asserts  itself  deliberately  against  an 
existing  custom  is  the  beginning  of  individuality  in 


88  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

mind.  This  beginning  is  developed  and  consolidated  in 
the  observations,  judgments,  inventions  which  try  to 
transform  the  environment  so  that  a  variant,  deviating 
impulse  may  itself  in  turn  become  incarnated  in  ob- 
jective habit. 


PART  TWO 


THE    PLACE    OP    IMPULSE    IN    CONDUCT 


HABITS  as  organized  activities  are  secondary  and 
acquired,  not  native  and  original.  They  are  out- 
growths of  unlearned  activities  which  are  part  of  man's 
endowment  at  birth.  The  order  of  topics  followed  in 
our  discussion  may  accordingly  be  questioned.  Why 
should  what  is  derived  and  therefore  in  some  sense  ar- 
tificial in  conduct  be  discussed  before  what  is  primitive, 
natural  and  inevitable?  Why  did  we  not  set  out  with 
an  examination  of  those  instinctive  activities  upon 
which  the  acquisition  of  habits  is  conditioned? 

The  query  is  a  natural  one,  yet  it  tempts  to  flinging 
forth  a  paradox.  In  conduct  the  acquired  is  the  prim- 
itive. Impulses  although  first  in  time  are  never  pri- 
mary in  fact;  they  are  secondary  and  dependent.  The 
seeming  paradox  in  statement  covers  a  familiar  fact. 
In  the  life  of  the  individual,  instinctive  activity  comes 
first.  But  an  individual  begins  life  as  a  baby,  and 
babies  are  dependent  beings.  Their  activities  could 
continue  at  most  for  only  a  few  hours  were  it  not  for 
the  presence  and  aid  of  adults  with  their  formed  habits. 
And  babies  owe  to  adults  more  than  procreation,  more 

89 


90     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

than  the  continued  food  and  protection  which  preserve 
life.  They  owe  to  adults  the  opportunity  to  express 
their  native  activities  in  ways  which  have  meaning. 
Even  if  by  some  miracle  original  activity  could  continue 
without  assistance  from  the  organized  skill  and  art  of 
adults,  it  would  not  amount  to  anything.  It  would  be 
mere  sound  and  fury. 

In  short,  the  meaning  of  native  activities  is  not  na- 
tive; it  is  acquired.  It  depends  upon  interaction  with 
a  matured  social  medium.  In  the  case  of  a  tiger  or 
eagle,  anger  may  be  identified  with  a  serviceable  life- 
activity,  with  attack  and  defense.  With  a  human  being 
it  is  as  meaningless  as  a  gust  of  wind  on  a  mudpuddle 
apart  from  a  direction  given  it  by  the  presence  of  other 
persons,  apart  from  the  responses  they  make  to  it.  It 
is  a  physical  spasm,  a  blind  dispersive  burst  of  waste- 
ful energy.  It  gets  quality,  significance,  when  it  be- 
comes a  smouldering  sullenness,  an  annoying  interrup- 
tion, a  peevish  irritation,  a  murderous  revenge,  a  blaz- 
ing indignation.  And  although  these  phenomena  which 
have  a  meaning  spring  from  original  native  reactions 
to  stimuli,  yet  they  depend  also  upon  the  responsive 
behavior  of  others.  They  and  all  similar  human  dis- 
plays of  anger  are  not  pure  impulses ;  they  are  habits 
formed  under  the  influence  of  association  with  others 
who  have  habits  already  and  who  show  their  habits  in 
the  treatment  which  converts  a  blind  physical  discharge 
into  a  significant  anger. 

After  ignoring  impulses  for  a  long  time  in  behalf  of 
sensations,  modern  psychology  now  tends  to  start  out 


IMPULSES  AND  CHANGE  91 

with  an  inventory  and  description  of  instinctive  activ- 
ities. This  is  an  undoubted  improvement.  But  when 
it  tries  to  explain  complicated  events  in  personal  and 
social  life  by  direct  reference  to  these  native  powers, 
the  explanation  becomes  hazy  and  forced.  It  is  like 
saying  the  flea  and  the  elephant,  the  lichen  and  the  red- 
wood, the  timid  hare  and  the  ravening  wolf,  the  plant 
with  the  most  inconspicuous  blossom  and  the  plant  with 
the  most  glaring  color  are  alike  products  of  natural 
selection.  There  may  be  a  sense  in  which  the  statement 
is  true;  but  till  we  know  the  specific  environing  condi- 
tions under  which  selection  took  place  we  really  know 
nothing.  And  so  we  need  to  know  about  the  social 
conditions  which  have  educated  original  activities  into 
definite  and  significant  dispositions  before  we  can  dis- 
cuss the  psychological  element  in  society.  This  is  the 
true  meaning  of  social  psychology. 

At  some  place  on  the  globe,  at  some  time,  every  kind 
of  practice  seems  to  have  been  tolerated  or  even  praised. 
How  is  the  tremendous  diversity  of  institutions  (includ- 
ing moral  codes)  to  be  accounted  for?  The  native 
stock  of  instincts  is  practically  the  same  everywhere. 
Exaggerate  as  much  as  we  like  the  native  differences  of 
Patagonians  and  Greeks,  Sioux  Indians  and  Hindoos, 
Bushmen  and  Chinese,  their  original  differences  will  bear 
no  comparison  to  the  amount  of  difference  found  in 
custom  and  culture.  Since  such  a  diversity  cannot  be 
attributed  to  an  original  identity,  the  development  of 
native  impulse  must  be  stated  in  terms  of  acquired 
habits,  not  the  growth  of  customs  in  terms  of  instincts. 


92     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

The  wholesale  human  sacrifices  of  Peru  and  the  tender- 
ness of  St.  Francis,  the  cruelties  of  pirates  and  the 
philanthropies  of  Howard,  the  practice  of  Suttee  and 
the  cult  of  the  Virgin,  the  war  and  peace  dances  of  the 
Comanches  and  the  parliamentary  institutions  of  the 
British,  the  communism  of  the  southsea  islander  and 
the  proprietary  thrift  of  the  Yankee,  the  magic  of  the 
medicine  man  and  the  experiments  of  the  chemist  in  his 
laboratory,  the  non-resistance  of  Chinese  and  the  ag- 
gressive militarism  of  an  imperial  Prussia,  monarchy 
by  divine  right  and  government  by  the  people;  the 
countless  diversity  of  habits  suggested  by  such  a  ran- 
dom list  springs  from  practically  the  same  capital-stock 
of  native  instincts. 

It  would  be  pleasant  if  we  could  pick  and  choose 
those  institutions  which  we  like  and  impute  them  to 
human  nature,  and  the  rest  to  some  devil ;  or  those  we 
like  to  our  kind  of  human  nature,  and  those  we  dislike 
to  the  nature  of  despised  foreigners  on  the  ground  they 
are  not  really  "  native  "  at  all.  It  would  appear  to  be 
simpler  if  we  could  point  to  certain  customs,  saying 
that  they  are  the  unalloyed  products  of  certain  in- 
stincts, while  those  other  social  arrangements  are  to  be 
attributed  wholly  to  other  impulses.  But  such  methods 
are  not  feasible.  The  same  original  fears,  angers,  loves 
and  hates  are  hopelessly  entangled  in  the  most  opposite 
institutions.  The  thing  we  need  to  know  is  how  a 
native  stock  has  been  modified  by  interaction  with  dif- 
ferent environments. 

Yet  it  goes  without  saying  that  original,  unlearned 


IMPULSES  AND  CHANGE  93 

activity  has  its  distinctive  place  and  that  an  important 
one  in  conduct.  Impulses  are  the  pivots  upon  which 
the  re-organization  of  activities  turn,  they  are  agencies 
of  deviation,  for  giving  new  directions  to  old  habits 
and  changing  their  quality.  Consequently  whenever 
we  are  concerned  with  understanding  social  transition 
and  flux  or  with  projects  for  reform,  personal  and  col- 
lective, our  study  must  go  to  analysis  of  native  ten- 
dencies. Interest  in  progress  and  reform  is,  indeed,  the 
reason  for  the  present  great  development  of  scientific 
interest  in  primitive  human  nature.  If  we  inquire  why 
men  were  so  long  blind  to  the  existence  of  powerful  and 
varied  instincts  in  human  beings,  the  answer  seems  to 
be  found  in  the  lack  of  a  conception  of  orderly  progress. 
It  is  fast  becoming  incredible  that  psychologists  dis- 
puted as  to  whether  they  should  choose  between  innate 
ideas  and  an  empty,  passive,  wax-like  mind.  For  it 
seems  as  if  a  glance  at  a  child  would  have  revealed  that 
the  truth  lay  in  neither  doctrine,  so  obvious  is  the  surg- 
ing of  specific  native  activities.  But  this  obtuseness 
to  facts  was  evidence  of  lack  of  interest  in  what  could 
be  done  with  impulses,  due,  in  turn,  to  lack  of  interest  in 
modifying  existing  institutions.  It  is  no  accident  that 
men  became  interested  in  the  psychology  of  savages 
and  babies  when  they  became  interested  in  doing  away 
with  old  institutions. 

A  combination  of  traditional  individualism  with  the 
recent  interest  in  progress  explains  why  the  discovery 
of  the  scope  and  force  of  instincts  has  led  many  psy- 
chologists to  think  of  them  as  the  fountain  head  of  all 


94.  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

conduct,  as  occupying  a  place  before  instead  of  after 
that  of  habits.  The  orthodox  tradition  in  psychology 
is  built  upon  isolation  of  individuals  from  their  sur- 
roundings. The  soul  or  mind  or  consciousness  was 
thought  of  as  self-contained  and  self-enclosed.  Now  in 
the  career  of  an  individual  if  it  is  regarded  as  com- 
plete in  itself  instincts  clearly  come  before  habits.  Gen- 
eralize this  individualistic  view,  and  we  have  an  assump- 
tion that  all  customs,  all  significant  episodes  in  the  life 
of  individuals  can  be  carried  directly  back  to  the  opera- 
tion of  instincts. 

But,  as  we  have  already  noted,  if  an  individual  be 
isolated  in  this  fashion,  along  with  the  fact  of  primacy 
of  instinct  we  find  also  the  fact  of  death.  The  inchoate 
and  scattered  impulses  of  an  infant  do  not  coordinate 
into  serviceable  powers  except  through  social  depend- 
encies and  companionships.  His  impulses  are  merely 
starting  points  for  assimilation  of  the  knowledge  and 
skill  of  the  more  matured  beings  upon  whom  he  depends. 
They  are  tentacles  sent  out  to  gather  that  nutrition 
from  customs  which  will  in  time  render  the  infant  cap- 
able of  independent  action.  They  are  agencies  for 
transfer  of  existing  social  power  into  personal  ability; 
they  are  means  of  reconstructive  growth.  Abandon  an 
impossible  individualistic  psychology,  and  we  arrive  at 
the  fact  that  native  activities  are  organs  of  re-organ- 
ization and  re-adjustment.  The  hen  precedes  the  egg. 
But  nevertheless  this  particular  egg  may  be  so  treated 
as  to  modify  the  future  type  of  hen. 


II 


In  the  case  of  the  young  it  is  patent  that  impulses 
are  highly  flexible  starting  points  for  activities  which 
are  diversified  according  to  the  ways  in  which  they  are 
used.  Any  impulse  may  become  organized  into  almost 
any  disposition  according  to  the  way  it  interacts  with 
surroundings.  Fear  may  become  abject  cowardice, 
prudent  caution,  reverence  for  superiors  or  respect  for 
equals;  an  agency  for  credulous  swallowing  of  absurd 
superstitions  or  for  wary  scepticism.  A  man  may  be 
chiefly  afraid  of  the  spirits  of  his  ancestors,  of  officials, 
of  arousing  the  disapproval  of  his  associates,  of  being 
deceived,  of  fresh  air,  or  of  Bolshevism.  The  actual 
outcome  depends  upon  how  the  impulse  of  fear  is  inter- 
woven with  other  impulses.  This  depends  in  turn  upon 
the  outlets  and  inhibitions  supplied  by  the  social  en- 
vironment. 

In  a  definite  sense,  then,  a  human  society  is  always 
starting  afresh.  It  is  always  in  process  of  renewing, 
and  it  endures  only  because  of  renewal.  We  speak  of 
the  peoples  of  southern  Europe  as  Latin  peoples.  Their 
existing  languages  depart  widely  from  one  another  and 
from  the  Latin  mother  tongue.  Yet  there  never  was  a 
day  when  this  alteration  of  speech  was  intentional  or 
explicit.  Persons  always  meant  to  reproduce  the  speech 
they  heard  from  their  elders  and  supposed  they  were 

95 


96     HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

succeeding.  This  fact  may  stand  as  a  kind  of  symbol 
of  the  reconstruction  wrought  in  habits  because  of  the 
fact  that  they  can  be  transmitted  and  be  made  to  en- 
dure only  through  the  medium  of  the  crude  activities 
of  the  young  or  through  contact  with  persons  having 
different  habits. 

For  the  most  part,  this  continuous  alteration  has 
been  unconscious  and  unintended.  Immature,  undevel- 
oped activity  has  succeeded  in  modifying  adult  organ- 
ized activity  accidentally  and  surreptitiously.  But 
with  the  dawn  of  the  idea  of  progressive  betterment  and 
an  interest  in  new  uses  of  impulses,  there  has  grown 
up  some  consciousness  of  the  extent  to  which  a  future 
new  society  of  changed  purposes  and  desires  may  be 
created  by  a  deliberate  humane  treatment  of  the  im- 
pulses of  youth.  This  is  the  meaning  of  education; 
for  a  truly  humane  education  consists  in  an  intelligent 
direction  of  native  activities  in  the  light  of  the  possi- 
bilities and  necessities  of  the  social  situation.  But  for 
the  most  part,  adults  have  given  training  rather  than 
education.  An  impatient,  premature  mechanization  of 
impulsive  activity  after  the  fixed  pattern  of  adult  habits 
of  thought  and  affection  has  been  desired.  The  com- 
bined effect  of  love  of  power,  timidity  in  the  face  of  the 
novel  and  a  self-admiring  complacency  has  been  too 
strong  to  permit  immature  impulse  to  exercise  its  re- 
organizing potentialities.  The  younger  generation 
has  hardly  even  knocked  frankly  at  the  door  of  adult 
customs,  much  less  been  invited  in  to  rectify  through 
better  education  the  brutalities  and  inequities  estab- 


PLASTICITY  OF  IMPULSE  97 

lished  in  adult  habits.  Each  new  generation  has  crept 
blindly  and  furtively  through  such  chance  gaps  as  have 
happened  to  be  left  open.  Otherwise  it  has  been  mod- 
eled after  the  old. 

We  have  already  noted  how  original  plasticity  is 
warped  and  docility  is  taken  mean  advantage  of.  It 
has  been  used  to  signify  not  capacity  to  learn  liberally 
and  generously,  but  willingness  to  learn  the  customs  of 
adult  associates,  ability  to  learn  just  those  special 
things  which  those  having  power  and  authority  wish 
to  teach.  Original  modifiability  has  not  been  given  a 
fair  chance  to  act  as  a  trustee  for  a  better  human  life. 
It  has  been  loaded  with  convention,  biased  by  adult 
convenience.  It  has  been  practically  rendered  into  an 
equivalent  of  non-assertion  of  originality,  a  pliant  ac- 
commodation to  the  embodied  opinions  of  others. 

Consequently  docility  has  been  identified  with  imi- 
tativeness,  instead  of  with  power  to  re-make  old  habits, 
to  re-create.  Plasticity  and  originality  have  been  op- 
posed to  each  other.  That  the  most  precious  part  of 
plasticity  consists  in  ability  to  form  habits  of  inde- 
pendent judgment  and  of  inventive  initiation  has  been 
ignored.  For  it  demands  a  more  complete  and  intense 
docility  to  form  flexible  easily  re-adjusted  habits  than 
it  does  to  acquire  those  which  rigidly  copy  the  ways 
of  others.  In  short,  among  the  native  activities  of  the 
young  are  some  that  work  towards  accommodation,  as- 
similation, reproduction,  and  others  that  work  toward 
exploration,  discovery  and  creation.  But  the  weight 
of  adult  custom  has  been  thrown  upon  retaining 


98 

and  strengthening  tendencies  toward  conformity,  and 
against  those  which  make  for  variation  and  independ- 
ence. The  habits  of  the  growing  person  are  jealously 
kept  within  the  limit  of  adult  customs.  The  delightful 
originality  of  the  child  is  tamed.  Worship  of  institu- 
tions and  personages  themselves  lacking  in  imaginative 
foresight,  versatile  observation  and  liberal  thought,  is 
enforced. 

Very  early  in  life  sets  of  mind  are  formed  without 
attentive  thought,  and  these  sets  persist  and  control  the 
mature  mind.  The  child  learns  to  avoid  the  shock  of 
unpleasant  disagreement,  to  find  the  easy  way  out, 
to  appear  to  conform  to  customs  which  are  wholly 
mysterious  to  him  in  order  to  get  his  own  way — that 
is  to  display  some  natural  impulse  without  exciting  the 
unfavorable  notice  of  those  in  authority.  Adults  dis- 
trust the  intelligence  which  a  child  has  while  making 
upon  him  demands  for  a  kind  of  conduct  that  requires 
a  high  order  of  intelligence,  if  it  is  to  be  intelligent  at 
all.  The  inconsistency  is  reconciled  by  instilling  in  him 
"  moral  "  habits  which  have  a  maximum  of  emotional 
empressment  and  adamantine  hold  with  a  minimum  of 
understanding.  These  habitudes,  deeply  engrained  be- 
fore thought  is  awake  and  even  before  the  day  of  ex- 
periences which  can  later  be  recalled,  govern  conscious 
later  thought.  They  are  usually  deepest  and  most 
unget-at-able  just  where  critical  thought  is  most  needed 
— in  morals,  religion  and  politics.  These  "  infantal- 
isms  "  account  for  the  mass  of  irrationalities  that  pre- 
vail among  men  of  otherwise  rational  tastes.  These 


PLASTICITY  OF  IMPULSE  99 

personal  "  hang-overs  "  are  the  cause  of  what  the  stu- 
dent of  culture  calls  survivals.  But  unfortunately 
these  survivals  are  much  more  numerous  and  pervasive 
than  the  anthropologist  and  historian  are  wont  to  ad- 
mit. To  list  them  would  perhaps  oust  one  from  "  re- 
spectable "  society. 

And  yet  the  intimation  never  wholly  deserts  us  that 
there  is  in  the  unformed  activities  of  childhood  and 
youth  the  possibilities  of  a  better  life  for  the  com- 
munity as  well  as  for  individuals  here  and  there.  This 
dim  sense  is  the  ground  of  our  abiding  idealization  of 
childhood.  For  with  all  its  extravagancies  and  uncer- 
tainties, its  effusions  and  reticences,  it  remains  a  stand- 
ing proof  of  a  life  wherein  growth  is  normal  not  an 
anomaly,  activity  a  delight  not  a  task,  and  where  habit- 
forming  is  an  expansion  of  power  not  its  shrinkage. 
Habit  and  impulse  may  war  with  each  other,  but  it  is 
a  combat  between  the  habits  of  adults  and  the  impulses 
of  the  young,  and  not,  as  with  the  adult,  a  civil  war- 
fare whereby  personality  is  rent  asunder.  Our  usual 
measure  for  the  "  goodness  "  of  children  is  the  amount 
of  trouble  they  make  for  grownups,  which  means  of 
course  the  amount  they  deviate  from  adult  habits  and 
expectations.  Yet  by  way  of  expiation  we  envy  chil- 
dren their  love  of  new  experiences,  their  intentness  in 
extracting  the  last  drop  of  significance  from  each  sit- 
uation, their  vital  seriousness  in  things  that  to  us  are 
outworn. 

We  compensate  for  the  harshness  and  monotony 
of  our  present  insistence  upon  formed  habits  by 


100         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

imagining  a  future  heaven  in  which  we  too  shall  respond 
freshly  and  generously  to  each  incident  of  life.  In 
consequence  of  our  divided  attitude,  our  ideals  are  self- 
contradictory.  On  the  one  hand,  we  dream  of  an  at- 
tained perfection,  an  ultimate  static  goal,  in  which 
effort  shall  cease,  and  desire  and  execution  be  once  and 
for  all  in  complete  equilibrium.  We  wish  for  a  char- 
acter which  shall  be  steadfast,  and  we  then  conceive  this 
desired  faithfulness  as  something  immutable,  a  char- 
acter exactly  the  same  yesterday,  today  and  forever. 
But  we  also  have  a  sneaking  sympathy  for  the  courage 
of  an  Emerson  in  declaring  that  consistency  should  be 
thrown  to  the  winds  when  it  stands  between  us  and  the 
opportunities  of  present  life.  We  reach  out  to  the 
opposite  extreme  of  our  ideal  of  fixity,  and*  under 
the  guise  of  a  return  to  nature  dream  of  a  romantic 
freedom,  in  which  all  life  is  plastic  to  impulse,  a  con- 
tinual source  of  improvised  spontaneities  and  novel  in- 
spirations. We  rebel  against  all  organization  and  all 
stability.  If  modern  thought  and  sentiment  is  to  es- 
cape from  this  division  in  its  ideals,  it  must  be  through 
utilizing  released  impulse  as  an  agent  of  steady  re- 
organization of  custom  and  institutions. 

While  childhood  is  the  conspicuous  proof  of  the 
renewing  of  habit  rendered  possible  by  impulse,  the 
latter  never  wholly  ceases  to  play  its  refreshing  role 
in  adult  life.  If  it  did,  life  would  petrify,  society  stag- 
nate. Instinctive  reactions  are  sometimes  too  intense 
to  be  woven  into  a  smooth  pattern  of  habits.  Under 
ordinary  circumstances  they  appear  to  be  tamed  to 


PLASTICITY  OF  IMPULSE  101 

obey  their  master,  custom.  But  extraordinary  crises 
release  them  and  they  show  by  wild  violent  energy  how 
superficial  is  the  control  of  routine.  The  saying  that 
civilization  is  only  skin  deep,  that  a  savage  persists 
beneath  the  clothes  of  a  civilized  man,  is  the  common 
acknowledgment  of  this  fact.  At  critical  moments  of 
unusual  stimuli  the  emotional  outbreak  and  rush  of 
instincts  dominating  all  activity  show  how  superficial 
is  the  modification  which  a  rigid  habit  has  been  able  to 
effect. 

When  we  face  this  fact  in  its  general  significance, 
we  confront  one  of  the  ominous  aspects  of  the  history 
of  man.  We  realize  how  little  the  progress  of  man 
has  been  the  product  of  intelligent  guidance,  how 
largely  it  has  been  a  by-product  of  accidental  upheav- 
als, even  though  by  an  apologetic  interest  in  behalf  of 
some  privileged  institution  we  later  transmute  chance 
into  providence.  We  have  depended  upon  the  clash  of 
war,  the  stress  of  revolution,  the  emergence  of  heroic 
individuals,  the  impact  of  migrations  generated  by  war 
and  famine,  the  incoming  of  barbarians,  to  change  es- 
tablished institutions.  Instead  of  constantly  utilizing 
unused  impulse  to  effect  continuous  reconstruction,  we 
have  waited  till  an  accumulation  of  stresses  suddenly 
breaks  through  the  dikes  of  custom. 

It  is  often  supposed  that  as  old  persons  die,  so  must 
old  peoples.  There  are  many  facts  in  history  to  sup- 
port the  belief.  Decadence  and  degeneration  seems  to 
be  the  rule  as  age  increases.  An  irruption  of  some  un- 
civilized horde  has  then  provided  new  blood  and  fresh 


102          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

life — so  much  so  that  history  has  been  defined  as  a  pro- 
cess of  rebarbarization.  In  truth  the  analogy  between 
a  person  and  a  nation  with  respect  to  senescence  and 
death  is  defective.  A  nation  is  always  renewed  by  the 
death  of  its  old  constituents  and  the  birth  of  those  who 
are  as  young  and  fresh  as  ever  were  any  individuals  in 
the  hey-day  of  the  nation's  glory.  Not  the  nation  but 
its  customs  get  old.  Its  institutions  petrify  into  rigid- 
ity; there  is  social  arterial  sclerosis.  Then  some  peo- 
ple not  overburdened  with  elaborate  and  stiff  habits 
take  up  and  carry  on  the  moving  process  of  life.  The 
stock  of  fresh  peoples  is,  however,  approaching  ex- 
haustion. It  is  not  safe  to  rely  upon  this  expensive 
method  of  renewing  civilization.  We  need  to  discover 
how  to  rejuvenate  it  from  within.  A  normal  perpetu- 
ation becomes  a  fact  in  the  degree  in  which  impulse  is 
released  and  habit  is  plastic  to  the  transforming  touch 
of  impulse.  When  customs  are  flexible  and  youth  is 
educated  as  youth  and  not  as  premature  adulthood, 
no  nation  grows  old. 

There  always  exists  a  goodly  store  of  non-function- 
ing impulses  which  may  be  drawn  upon.  Their  mani- 
festation and  utilization  is  called  conversion  or  regen- 
eration when  it  comes  suddenly.  But  they  may  be 
drawn  upon  continuously  and  moderately.  Then  we 
call  it  learning  or  educative  growth.  Rigid  custom 
signifies  not  that  there  are  no  such  impulses  but  that 
they  are  not  organically  taken  advantage  of.  As  mat- 
ter of  fact,  the  stiffer  and  the  more  encrusted  the  cus- 
toms, the  larger  is  the  number  of  instinctive  activities 


PLASTICITY  OF  IMPULSE  103 

that  find  no  regular  outlet  and  that  accordingly  merely 
await  a  chance  to  get  an  irregular,  uncoordinated  man- 
ifestation. Routine  habits  never  take  up  all  the  slack. 
They  apply  only  where  conditions  remain  the  same  or 
recur  in  uniform  ways.  They  do  not  fit  the  unusual 
and  novel. 

Consequently  rigid  moral  codes  that  attempt  to  lay 
down  definite  injunctions  and  prohibitions  for  every 
occasion  in  life  turn  out  in  fact  loose  and  slack. 
Stretch  ten  commandments  or  any  other  number  as  far 
as  you  will  by  ingenious  exegesis,  yet  acts  unprovided 
for  by  them  will  occur.  No  elaboration  of  statute  law 
can  forestall  variant  cases  and  the  need  of  interpreta- 
tion ad  hoc.  Moral  and  legal  schemes  that  attempt 
the  impossible  in  the  way  of  definite  formulation  com- 
pensate for  explicit  strictness  in  some  lines  by  implicit 
looseness  in  others.  The  only  truly  severe  code  is  the 
one  which  foregoes  codification,  throwing  responsibility 
for  judging  each  case  upon  the  agents  concerned,  im- 
posing upon  them  the  burden  of  discovery  and  adap- 
tation. 

The  relation  which  actually  exists  between  un- 
directed instinct  and  over-organized  custom  is  illus- 
trated in  the  two  views  that  are  current  about  savage 
life.  The  popular  view  looks  at  the  savage  as  a  wild 
man;  as  one  who  knows  no  controlling  principles  or 
rules  of  action,  who  freely  follows  his  own  impulse, 
whim  or  desire  whenever  it  seizes  him  and  wherever  it 
takes  him.  Anthropologists  are  given  to  the  opposed 
notion.  They  view  savages  as  bondsmen  to  custom. 


104          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

They  note  the  network  of  regulations  that  order  his 
risings-up  and  his  sittings-down,  his  goings-out  and 
his  comings-in.  They  conclude  that  in  comparison 
with  civilized  man  the  savage  is  a  slave,  governed  by 
many  inflexible  tribal  habitudes  in  conduct  and  ideas. 

The  truth  about  savage  life  lies  in  a  combination  of 
these  two  conceptions.  Where  customs  exist  they  are 
of  one  pattern  and  binding  on  personal  sentiment  and 
thought  to  a  degree  unknown  in  civilized  life.  But  since 
they  cannot  possibly  exist  with  respect  to  all  the  chang- 
ing detail  of  daily  life,  whatever  is  left  uncovered  by 
custom  is  free  from  regulation.  It  is  therefore  left  to 
appetite  and  momentary  circumstance.  Thus  enslave- 
ment to  custom  and  license  of  impulse  exist  side  by  side. 
Strict  conformity  and  unrestrained  wildness  intensify 
each  other.  This  picture  of  life  shows  us  in  an  exag- 
gerated form  the  psychology  current  in  civilized  life 
whenever  customs  harden  and  hold  individuals  en- 
meshed. Within  civilization,  the  savage  still  exists.  He 
is  known  in  his  degree  by  oscillation  between  loose  in- 
dulgence and  stiff  habit. 

Impulse  in  short  brings  with  itself  the  possibility 
but  not  the  assurance  of  a  steady  reorganization  of 
habits  to  meet  new  elements  in  new  situations.  The 
moral  problem  in  child  and  adult  alike  as  regards  im- 
pulse and  instinct  is  to  utilize  them  for  formation  of 
new  habits,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  modification 
of  an  old  habit  so  that  it  may  be  adequately  serviceable 
under  novel  conditions.  The  place  of  impulse  in  con- 
duct as  a  pivot  of  re-adjustment, 're-organization,  in 


PLASTICITY  OF  IMPULSE  105 

habits  may  be  defined  as  follows:  On  one  side,  it  is 
marked  off  from  the  territory  of  arrested  and  encrusted 
habits.  On  the  other  side,  it  is  demarcated  from  the 
region  in  which  impulse  is  a  law  unto  itself.*  General- 
izing these  distinctions,  a  valid  moral  theory  contrasts 
with  all  those  theories  which  set  up  static  goals  (even 
when  they  are  called  perfection),  and  with  those  the- 
ories which  idealize  raw  impulse  and  find  in  its  spon- 
taneities an  adequate  mode  of  human  freedom.  Im- 
pulse is  a  source,  an  indispensable  source,  of  liberation ; 
but  only  as  it  is  employed  in  giving  habits  pertinence 
and  freshness  does  it  liberate  power. 

*  The  use  of  the  words  instinct  and  impulse  as  practical  equiva- 
lents is  intentional,  even  though  it  may  grieve  critical  readers. 
The  word  instinct  taken  alone  is  still  too  laden  with  the  older 
notion  that  an  instinct  is  always  definitely  organized  and  adapted 
— which  for  the  most  part  is  just  what  it  is  not  in  human  beings. 
The  word  impulse  suggests  something  primitive,  yet  loose,  undi- 
rected, initial.  Man  can  progress  as  boasts  cannot,  precisely 
because  he  has  so  many  '  instincts '  that  they  cut  across  one 
another,  so  that  most  serviceable  actions  must  be  learned.  In 
learning  habits  it  ia  possible  for  man  to  learn  the  habit  of 
learning.  Then  betterment  becomes  a  conscious  principle  of  life. 


Ill 


Incidentally  we  have  touched  upon  a  most  far-reach- 
ing problem:  The  alterability  of  human  nature.  Early 
reformers,  following  John  Locke,  were  inclined  to  mini- 
mize the  significance  of  native  activities,  and  to  em- 
phasize the  possibilities  inherent  in  practice  and  habit- 
acquisition.  There  was  a  political  slant  to  this  denial 
of  the  native  and  a  priori,  this  magnifying  of  the  ac- 
complishments of  acquired  experience.  It  held  out  a 
prospect  of  continuous  development,  of  improvement 
without  end.  Thus  writers  like  Helvetius  made  the  idea 
of  the  complete  malleability  of  a  human  nature  which 
originally  is  wholly  empty  and  passive,  the  basis  for 
asserting  the  omnipotence  of  education  to  shape  human 
society,  and  the  ground  of  proclaiming  the  infinite  per- 
fectibility of  mankind. 

Wary,  experienced  men  of  the  world  have  always 
been  sceptical  of  schemes  of  unlimited  improvement. 
They  tend  to  regard  plans  for  social  change  with  an 
eye  of  suspicion.  They  find  in  them  evidences  of  the 
proneness  of  youth  to  illusion,  or  of  incapacity  on  the 
part  of  those  who  have  grown  old  to  learn  anything 
from  experience.  This  type  of  conservative  has 
thought  to  find  in  the  doctrine  of  native  instincts  a 
scientific  support  for  asserting  the  practical  unaltera- 
bility  of  human  nature.  Circumstances  may  change 

106 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  107 

but  human  nature  remains  from  age  to  age  the  same. 
Heredity  is  more  potent  than  environment,  and  human 
heredity  is  untouched  by  human  intent.  Effort  for  a 
serious  alteration  of  human  institutions  is  utopian.  As 
things  have  been  so  they  will  be.  The  more  they  change 
the  more  they  remain  the  same. 

Curiously  enough  both  parties  rest  their  case  upon 
just  the  factor  which  when  it  is  analyzed  weakens  their 
respective  conclusions.  That  is  to  say,  the  radical  re- 
former rests  his  contention  in  behalf  of  easy  and  rapid 
change  upon  the  psychology  of  habits,  of  institutions 
in  shaping  raw  nature,  and  the  conservative  grounds 
his  counter-assertion  upon  the  psychology  of  instincts. 
As  matter  of  fact,  it  is  precisely  custom  which  has 
greatest  inertia,  which  is  least  susceptible  of  alteration ; 
while  instincts  are  most  readily  modifiable  through  use, 
most  subject  to  educative  direction.  The  conservative 
who  begs  scientific  support  from  the  psychology  of  in- 
stincts is  the  victim  of  an  outgrown  psychology  which 
derived  its  notion  of  instinct  from  an  exaggeration  of 
the  fixity  and  certainty  of  the  operation  of  instincts 
among  the  lower  animals.  He  is  a  victim  of  a  popular 
zoology  of  the  bird,  bee  and  beaver,  which  was  largely 
framed  to  the  greater  glory  of  God.  He  is  ignorant 
that  instincts  in  the  animals  are  less  infallible  and  defi- 
nite than  is  supposed,  and  also  that  the  human  being 
differs  from  the  lower  animals  in  precisely  the  fact  that 
his  native  activities  lack  the  complex  ready-made  or- 
ganization of  the  animals'  original  abilities. 

But  the  short-cut  revolutionist  fails  to  realize  the 


108          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

full  force  of  the  things  about  which  he  talks  most, 
namely  institutions  as  embodied  habits.  Any  one  with 
knowledge  of  the  stability  and  force  of  habit  will  hesi- 
tate to  propose  or  prophesy  rapid  and  sweeping  social 
changes.  A  social  revolution  may  effect  abrupt  and 
deep  alterations  in  external  customs,  in  legal  and  po- 
litical institutions.  But  the  habits  that  are  behind 
these  institutions  and  that  have,  willy-nilly,  been  shaped 
by  objective  conditions,  the  habits  of  thought  and  feel- 
ing, are  not  so  easily  modified.  They  persist  and  in- 
sensibly assimilate  to  themselves  the  outer  innovations 
— much  as  American  judges  nullify  the  intended 
changes  of  statute  law  by  interpreting  legislation  in 
the  light  of  common  law.  The  force  of  lag  in  human 
life  is  enormous. 

Actual  social  change  is  never  so  great  as  is  apparent 
change.  Ways  of  belief,  of  expectation,  of  judgment 
and  attendant  emotional  dispositions  of  like  and  dis- 
like, are  not  easily  modified  after  they  have  once  taken 
shape.  Political  and  legal  institutions  may  be  altered, 
even  abolished ;  but  the  bulk  of  popular  thought  which 
has  been  shaped  to  their  pattern  persists.  This  is  why 
glowing  predictions  of  the  immediate  coming  of  a  social 
millennium  terminate  so  uniformly  in  disappoint- 
ment, which  gives  point  to  the  standing  suspicion  of 
the  cynical  conservative  about  radical  changes.  Habits 
of  thought  outlive  modifications  in  habits  of  overt 
action.  The  former  are  vital,  the  latter,  without  the 
sustaining  life  of  the  former,  are  muscular  tricks.  Con- 
sequently as  a  rule  the  moral  effects  of  even  great  po- 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  109 

litical  revolutions,  after  a  few  years  of  outwardly  con- 
spicuous alterations,  do  not  show  themselves  till  after 
the  lapse  of  years.  A  new  generation  must  come  upon 
the  scene  whose  habits  of  mind  have  been  formed  under 
the  new  conditions.  There  is  pith  in  the  saying  that 
important  reforms  cannot  take  real  effect  until  after 
a  number  of  influential  persons  have  died.  Where  gen- 
eral and  enduring  moral  changes  do  accompany  an 
external  revolution  it  is  because  appropriate  habits  of 
thought  have  previously  been  insensibly  matured.  The 
external  change  merely  registers  the  removal  of  an  ex- 
ternal superficial  barrier  to  the  operation  of  existing 
intellectual  tendencies. 

Those  who  argue  that  social  and  moral  reform  is 
impossible  on  the  ground  that  the  Old  Adam  of  human 
nature  remains  forever  the  same,  attribute  however  to 
native  activities  the  permanence  and  inertia  that  in 
truth  belong  only  to  acquired  customs.  To  Aristotle 
slavery  was  rooted  in  aboriginal  human  nature.  Na- 
tive distinctions  of  quality  exist  such  that  some  persons 
are  by  nature  gifted  with  power  to  plan,  command  and 
supervise,  and  others  possess  merely  capacity  to  obey 
and  execute.  Hence  slavery  is  natural  and  inevitable. 
There  is  error  in  supposing  that  because  domestic  and 
chattel  slavery  has  been  legally  abolished,  therefore 
slavery  as  conceived  by  Aristotle  has  disappeared.  But 
matters  have  at  least  progressed  to  a  point  where  it  is 
clear  that  slavery  is  a  social  state  not  a  psychological 
necessity.  Nevertheless  the  worldlywise  Aristotles  of 
today  assert  that  the  institutions  of  war  and  the  pres- 


110          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ent  wage-system  are  so  grounded  in  immutable  human 
nature  that  effort  to  change  them  is  foolish. 

Like  Greek  slavery  or  feudal  serfdom,  war  and  the 
existing  economic  regime  are  social  patterns  woven  out 
of  the  stuff  of  instinctive  activities.  Native  human 
nature  supplies  the  raw  materials,  but  custom  furnishes 
the  machinery  and  the  designs.  War  would  not  be  pos- 
sible without  anger,  pugnacity,  rivalry,  self-display, 
and  such  like  native  tendencies.  Activity  inheres  in 
them  and  will  persist  under  every  condition  of  life.  To 
imagine  they  can  be  eradicated  is  like  supposing  that 
society  can  go  on  without  eating  and  without  union  of 
the  sexes.  But  to  fancy  that  they  must  eventuate  in 
war  is  as  if  a  savage  were  to  believe  that  because  he 
uses  fibers  having  fixed  natural  properties  in  order  to 
weave  baskets,  therefore  his  immemorial  tribal  patterns 
are  also  natural  necessities  and  immutable  forms. 

From  a  humane  standpoint  our  study  of  history  is 
still  all  too  primitive.  It  is  possible  to  study  a  multi- 
tude of  histories,  and  yet  permit  history,  the  record  of 
the  transitions  and  transformations  of  human  activities, 
to  escape  us.  Taking  history  in  separate  doses  of  this 
country  and  that,  we  take  it  as  a  succession  of  isolated 
finalities,  each  one  in  due  season  giving  way  to  another, 
as  supernumeraries  succeed  one  another  in  a  march 
across  the  stage.  We  thus  miss  the  fact  of  history  and 
also  its  lesson ;  the  diversity  of  institutional  forms  and 
customs  which  the  same  human  nature  may  produce 
and  employ.  An  infantile  logic,  now  happily  expelled 
from  physical  science,  taught  that  opium  put  men  tt> 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  111 

sleep  because  of  its  dormitive  potency.  We  follow  the 
same  logic  in  social  matters  when  we  believe  that  war 
exists  because  of  bellicose  instincts;  or  that  a  partic- 
ular economic  regime  is  necessary  because  of  acquisi- 
tive and  competitive  impulses  which  must  find  ex- 
pression. 

Pugnacity  and  fear  are  no  more  native  than  are 
pity  and  sympathy.  The  important  thing  morally  is 
the  way  these  native  tendencies  interact,  for  their  inter- 
action may  give  a  chemical  transformation  not  a  me- 
chanical combination.  Similarly,  no  social  institution 
stands  alone  as  a  product  of  one  dominant  force.  It  is 
a  phenomenon  or  function  of  a  multitude  of  social  fac- 
tors in  their  mutual  inhibitions  and  reinforcements.  If 
we  follow  an  infantile  logic  we  shall  reduplicate  the 
unity  of  result  in  an  assumption  of  unity  of  force  be- 
hind it — as  men  once  did  with  natural  events,  employing 
teleology  as  an  exhibition  of  causal  efficiency.  We  thus 
take  the  same  social  custom  twice  over:  once  as  an 
existing  fact  and  then  as  an  original  force  which  pro- 
duced the  fact,  and  utter  sage  platitudes  about  the 
unalterable  workings  of  human  nature  or  of  race.  As 
we  account  for  war  by  pugnacity,  for  the  capitalistic 
system  by  the  necessity  of  an  incentive  of  gain  to  stir 
ambition  and  effort,  so  we  account  for  Greece  by  power 
of  esthetic  observation,  Rome  by  administrative  ability, 
the  middle  ages  by  interest  in  religion  and  so  on.  We 
have  constructed  an  elaborate  political  zoology  as 
mythological  and  not  nearly  as  poetic  as  the  other 
zoology  9f  phoenixes,  griffins  and  unicorns.  Native 


112          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

racial  spirit,  the  spirit  of  the  people  or  of  the  time, 
national  destiny  are  familiar  figures  in  this  social  zoo. 
As  names  for  effects,  for  existing  customs,  they  are 
sometimes  useful.  As  names  for  explanatory  forces 
they  work  havoc  with  intelligence. 

An  immense  debt  is  due  William  James  for  the  mere 
title  of  his  essay:  The  Moral  Equivalents  of  War.  It 
reveals  with  a  flash  of  light  the  true  psychology. 
Clans,  tribes,  races,  cities,  empires,  nations,  states  have 
made  war.  The  argument  that  this  fact  proves  an 
ineradicable  belligerent  instinct  which  makes  war  for- 
ever inevitable  is  much  more  respectable  than  many 
arguments  about  the  immutability  of  this  and  that 
social  tradition.  For  it  has  the  weight  of  a  certain 
empirical  generality  back  of  it.  Yet  the  suggestion  of 
an  equivalent  for  war  calls  attention  to  the  medley  of 
impulses  which  are  casually  bunched  together  under  the 
caption  of  belligerent  impulse ;  and  it  calls  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  elements  of  this  medley  may  be  woven 
together  into  many  differing  types  of  activity,  some 
of  which  may  function  the  native  impulses  in  much 
better  ways  than  war  has  ever  done. 

Pugnacity,  rivalry,  vainglory,  love  of  booty,  fear, 
suspicion,  anger,  desire  for  freedom  from  the  conven- 
tions and  restrictions  of  peace,  love  of  power  and 
hatred  of  oppression,  opportunity  for  novel  displays, 
love  of  home  and  soil,  attachment  to  one's  people  and 
to  the  altar  and  the  hearth,  courage,  loyalty,  oppor- 
tunity to  make  a  name,  money  or  a  career,  affection, 
piety  to  ancestors  and  ancestral  gods — all  of  these 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  113 

things  and  many  more  make  up  the  war-like  force.  To 
suppose  there  is  some  one  unchanging  native  force  which 
generates  war  is  as  naive  as  the  usual  assumption  that 
our  enemy  is  actuated  solely  by  the  meaner  of  the  ten- 
dencies named  and  we  only  by  the  nobler.  In  earlier 
days  there  was  something  more  than  a  verbal  connec- 
tion between  pugnacity  and  fighting;  anger  and  fear 
moved  promptly  through  the  fists.  But  between  a 
loosely  organized  pugilism  and  the  highly  organized 
warfare  of  today  there  intervenes  a  long  economic, 
scientific  and  political  history.  Social  conditions 
rather  than  an  old  and  unchangeable  Adam  have  gen- 
erated wars ;  the  ineradicable  impulses  that  are  utilized 
in  them  are  capable  of  being  drafted  into  many  other 
channels.  The  century  that  has  witnessed  the  triumph 
of  the  scientific  doctrine  of  the  convertibility  of  natural 
energies  ought  not  to  balk  at  the  lesser  miracle  of 
social  equivalences  and  substitutes. 

It  is  likely  that  if  Mr.  James  had  witnessed  the  world 
war,  he  would  have  modified  his  mode  of  treatment.  So 
many  new  transformations  entered  into  the  war,  that 
the  war  seems  to  prove  that  though  an  equivalent  has 
not  been  found  for  war,  the  psychological  forces  tra- 
ditionally associated  with  it  have  already  undergone 
profound  changes.  We  may  take  the  Iliad  as  a  classic 
expression  of  war's  traditional  psychology  as  well  as 
the  source  of  the  literary  tradition  regarding  its  mo- 
tives and  glories.  But  where  are  Helen,  Hector  and 
Achilles  in  modern  warfare?  The  activities  that  evoke 
and  incorporate  a  war  are  no  longer  personal  love, 


114          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

love  of  glory,  or  the  soldier's  love  of  his  own  privately 
amassed  booty,  but  are  of  a  collective,  prosaic  political 
and  economic  nature. 

Universal  conscription,  the  general  mobilization  of 
all  agricultural  and  industrial  forces  of  the  folk  not 
engaged  in  the  trenches,  the  application  of  every  con- 
ceivable scientific  and  mechanical  device,  the  mass 
movements  of  soldiery  regulated  from  a  common  center 
by  a  depersonalized  general  staff:  these  factors  relegate 
the  traditional  psychological  apparatus  of  war  to  a 
now  remote  antiquity.  The  motives  once  appealed  to 
are  out  of  date;  they  do  not  now  induce  war.  They 
simply  are  played  upon  after  war  has  been  brought 
into  existence  in  order  to  keep  the  common  soldiers 
keyed  up  to  their  task.  The  more  horrible  a  deper- 
sonalized scientific  mass  war  becomes,  the  more  neces- 
sary it  is  to  find  universal  ideal  motives  to  justify  it. 
Love  of  Helen  of  Troy  has  become  a  burning  love  for 
all  humanity,  and  hatred  of  the  foe  symbolizes  a  hatred 
of  all  the  unrighteousness  and  injustice  and  oppression 
which  he  embodies.  The  more  prosaic  the  actual  causes, 
the  more  necessary  is  it  to  find  glowingly  sublime 
motives. 

Such  considerations  hardly  prove  that  war  is  to  be 
abolished  at  some  future  date.  But  they  destroy  that 
argument  for  its  necessary  continuance  which  is  based 
on  the  immutability  of  specified  forces  in  original  human 
nature.  Already  the  forces  that  once  caused  wars  have 
found  other  outlets  for  themselves ;  while  new  provoca- 
tions, based  on  new  economic  and  political  conditions, 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  115 

have  come  into  being.  War  is  thus  seen  to  be  a  function 
of  social  institutions,  not  of  what  is  natively  fixed  in 
human  constitution.  The  last  great  war  has  not,  it 
must  be  confessed,  made  the  problem  of  finding  social 
equivalents  simpler  and  easier.  It  is  now  naive  to  at- 
tribute war  to  specific  isolable  human  impulses  for 
which  separate  channels  of  expression  may  be  found, 
while  the  rest  of  life  is  left  to  go  on  about  the  same. 
A  general  social  re-organization  is  needed  which  will 
redistribute  forces,  immunize,  divert  and  nullify.  Hin- 
ton  was  doubtless  right  when  he  wrote  that  the  only 
way  to  abolish  war  was  to  make  peace  heroic.  It  now 
appears  that  the  heroic  emotions  are  not  anything 
which  may  be  specialized  in  a  side-line,  so  that  the  war- 
impulses  may  find  a  sublimation  in  special  practices 
and  occupations.  They  have  to  get  an  outlet  in  all  the 
tasks  of  peace. 

The  argument  for  the  abiding  necessity  of  war  turns 
out,  accordingly,  to  have  this  much  value.  It  makes  us 
wisely  suspicious  of  all  cheap  and  easy  equivalencies. 
It  convinces  us  of  the  folly  of  striving  to  eliminate  war 
by  agencies  which  leave  other  institutions  of  society 
pretty  much  unchanged.  History  does  not  prove  the 
inevitability  of  war,  but  it  does  prove  that  customs  and 
institutions  which  organize  native  powers  into  certain 
patterns  in  politics  and  economics  will  also  generate  the 
war-pattern.  The  problem  of  war  is  difficult  because  it 
is  serious.  It  is  none  other  than  the  wider  problem  of 
the  effective  moralizing  or  humanizing  of  native  im- 
pulses in  times  of  peace. 


116          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

The  case  of  economic  institutions  is  as  suggestive  as 
that  of  war.  The  present  system  is  indeed  much  more 
recent  and  more  local  than  is  the  institution  of  war.  But 
no  system  has  ever  as  yet  existed  which  did  not  in  some 
form  involve  the  exploitation  of  some  human  beings 
for  the  advantage  of  others.  And  it  is  argued  that  this 
trait  is  unassailable  because  it  flows  from  the  inherent, 
immutable  qualities  of  human  nature.  It  is  argued,  for 
example,  that  economic  inferiorities  and  disabilities  are 
incidents  of  an  institution  of  private  property  which 
flows  from  an  original  proprietary  instinct;  it  is  con- 
tended they  spring  from  a  competitive  struggle  for 
wealth  which  in  turn  flows  from  the  absolute  need  of 
profit  as  an  inducement  to  industry.  The  pleas  are 
worth  examination  for  the  light  they  throw  upon  the 
place  of  impulses  in  organized  conduct. 

No  unprejudiced  observer  will  lightly  deny  the  ex- 
istence of  an  original  tendency  to  assimilate  objects  and 
events  to  the  self,  to  make  them  part  of  the  "  me."  We 
may  even  admit  that  the  "  me  "  cannot  exist  without 
the  "  mine."  The  self  gets  solidity  and  form  through 
an  appropriation  of  things  which  identifies  them  with 
whatever  we  call  myself.  Even  a  workman  in  a  modern 
factory  where  depersonalization  is  extreme  gets  to  have 
"  his  "  machine  and  is  perturbed  at  a  change.  Posses- 
sion shapes  and  consolidates  the  "  I "  of  philosophers. 
"  I  own,  therefore  I  am  "  expresses  a  truer  psychology 
than  the  Cartesian  "  I  think,  therefore  I  am."  A  man's 
deeds  are  imputed  to  him  as  their  owner,  not  merely 
as  their  creator.  That  he  cannot  disown  them  when 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE 

the  moment  of  their  occurrence  passes  is  the  root  of 
responsibility,  moral  as  well  as  legal. 

But  these  same  considerations  evince  the  versatility 
of  possessive  activity.  My  worldly  goods,  my  good 
name,  my  friends,  my  honor  and  shame  all  depend  upon 
a  possessive  tendency.  The  need  for  appropriation  has 
had  to  be  satisfied;  but  only  a  calloused  imagination 
fancies  that  the  institution  of  private  property  as  it 
exists  A.  D.  1921  is  the  sole  or  the  indispensable  means 
of  its  realization.  Every  gallant  life  is  an  experiment 
in  different  ways  of  fulfilling  it.  It  expends  itself  in 
predatory  aggression,  in  forming  friendships,  in  seek- 
ing fame,  in  literary  creation,  in  scientific  production. 
In  the  face  of  this  elasticity,  it  requires  an  arrogant  ig- 
norance to  take  the  existing  complex  system  of  stocks 
and  bonds,  of  wills  and  inheritance,  a  system  supported 
at  every  point  by  manifold  legal  and  political  arrange- 
ments, and  treat  it  as  the  sole  legitimate  and  baptized 
child  of  an  instinct  of  appropriation.  Sometimes,  even 
now,  a  man  most  accentuates  the  fact  of  ownership 
when  he  gives  something  away;  use,  consumption,  is 
the  normal  end  of  possession.  We  can  conceive  a  state 
of  things  in  which  the  proprietary  impulse  would  get 
full  satisfaction  by  holding  goods  as  mine  in  just  the 
degree  in  which  they  were  visibly  administered  for  a 
benefit  in  which  a  corporate  community  shared. 

Does  the  case  stand  otherwise  with  the  other  psycho- 
logical principle  appealed  to,  namely,  the  need  of  an 
incentive  of  personal  profit  to  keep  men  engaged  in 
useful  work  ?  We  need  not  content  ourselves  with  point- 


118          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ing  out  the  elasticity  of  the  idea  of  gain,  and  possible 
equivalences  for  pecuniary  gain,  and  the  possibility  of  a 
state  of  affairs  in  which  only  those  things  would  be 
counted  personal  gains  which  profit  a  group.  It  will 
advance  the  discussion  if  we  instead  subject  to  analysis 
the  whole  conception  of  incentive  and  motive. 

There  is  doubtless  some  sense  in  saying  that  j?yerj[ 
conscious  act  has  an  incentive  or  motive.  But  this 
senseis  as  truistic  as  that  of  the  not  dissimilar  saying 
that  every  event  has  a  cause.  Neither  statement  throws 
any  light  on  any  particular  occurrence.  It  is  at  most 
a  maxim  which  advises  us  to  search  for  some  other  fact 
with  which  the  one  in  question  may  be  correlated. 
Those  who  attempt  to  defend  the  necessity  of  existing 
economic  institutions  as  manifestations  of  human  na- 
ture convert  this  suggestion  of  a  concrete  inquiry  into 
a  generalized  truth  and  hence  into  a  definitive  falsity. 
They  take  the  saying  to  mean  that  nobody  would  do 
anything,  or  at  least  anything  of  use  to  others,  with- 
out a  prospect  of  some  tangible  reward.  And  beneath 
this  false  proposition  there  is  another  assumption  still 
more  monstrous,  namely,  that  man  exists  naturally  in  a 
state  of  rest  so  that  he  requires  some  external  force 
to  set  him  into  action. 

The  idea  of  a  thing  intrinsically  wholly  inert  in  the 
sense  of  absolutely  passive  is  expelled  from  physics  and 
has  taken  refuge  in  the  psychology  of  current  econom- 
ics. In  truth  man  acts  anyway,  he  can't  help  acting. 
In  every  fundamental  sense  it  is  false  that  a  man  re- 
quires a  motive  to  make  him  do  something.  To  a 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  119 

healthy  man  inaction  is  the  greatest  of  woes.  Any  one 
who  observes  children  knows  that  while  periods  of  rest 
are  natural,  laziness  is  an  acquired  vice — or  virtue. 
While  a  man  is  awake  he  will  do  something,  if  only  to 
build  castles  in  the  air.  If  we  like  the  form  of  words 
we  may  say  that  a  man  eats  only  because  he  is 
"  moved  "  by  hunger.  The  statement  is  nevertheless 
mere  tautology.  For  what  does  hunger  mean  except 
that  one  of  the  things  which  man  does  naturally,  in- 
stinctively, is  to  search  for  food — that  his  activity  nat- 
urally turns  that  way?  Hunger  primarily  names  an 
act  or  active  process  not  a  motive  to  an  act.  It  is  an 
act  if  we  take  it  grossly,  like  a  babe's  blind  hunt  for  the 
mother's  breast ;  it  is  an  activity  if  we  take  it  minutely 
as  a  chemico-physiological  occurrence. 

The  whole  concept  of  motives  is  in  truth  extra- 
psychological.  It  is  an  outcome  of  the  attempt  of  men 
to  influence  human  action,  first  that  of  others,  then  of 
a  man  to  influence  his  own  behavior.  No  sensible  person 
thinks  of  attributing  the  acts  of  an  animal  or  an  idiot 
to  a  motive.  We  call  a  biting  dog  ugly,  but  we  don't 
look  for  his  motive  in  biting.  If  however  we  were  able 
to  direct  the  dog's  action  by  inducing  him  to  reflect 
upon  his  acts,  we  should  at  once  become  interested  in 
the  dog's  motives  for  acting  as  he  does,  and  should 
endeavor  to  get  him  interested  in  the  same  subject.  It_ 
is  absurd  to  ask  what  induces  a  man  to  activity  gen- 
erally speaking.  He  is  an  active  being  and  that  is  all 
"there •is  to  be  said  on  that  score.  But  when  we  want 
to  get  him  to  act  in  this  specific  way  rather  than  in 


120         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

that,  when  we  want  to  direct  his.  activity  thaJL_is_tousay 
in  a  specified  channel,  then  the  question  of  inotiyeis 
pertinent.  A  motive  is  then  that  element  in  the  total 
complex  of  a  man's  activity  which,  if  it  can  be  suf- 
ficiently stimulated,  will  result  in  an  act  having  speci- 
fied consequences.  And  part  of  the  process  of  intensi- 
fying (or  reducing)  certain  elements  in  thejbotaj^actiyj- 
ityjmd  thus  regulating  actual  consequence  is  to  impute 
these_^lementsto  a  person  aj his  Actuating  motives. 

A  child  naturally  grabs  food.  ButJie  does  it  in  our 
presence.  His  manner  is  socially  displeasing  and  we 
attribute  to  his  act,  up  to  this  time  wholly  innocent, 
the  motive  of  greed  or  selfishness.  Greediness  simply 
means  the  quality  of  his  act  as  socially  observed  and 
disapproved.  But  by  attributing  it  to  him  as  his  mo- 
tive for  acting  in  the  disapproved  way,  we  induce  him 
to  refrain.  We  analyze  his  total  act  and  call  his  atten- 
tion to  an  obnoxious  element  in  its  outcome.  A  child 
with  equal  spontaneity,  or  thoughtlessness,  gives  way 
to  others.  We  point  out  to  him  with  approval  that  he 
acted  considerately,  generously.  And  this  quality  of 
action  when  noted  and  encouraged  becomes  a  reinforc- 
ing stimulus  of  that  factor  which  will  induce  similar 
acts  in  the  future.  An  element  in  an  act  viewed  as  a 
tendency  to  produce  such  and  such  consequences  is  a 
motive.  A  motive  does  not  exist  ^rior  J£^in_act  and 
produce  it.  It  is  an  act  plus  a  judgment  upon  some 
element  o?  it,  the  judgment  being  made  in  the  light  of 
the  consequences  of  the  act. 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  121 

At  first,  as  was  said,  others  characterize  an  act  with 
favorable  or  condign  qualities  which  they  impute  to  an 
agent's  character.  They  react  in  this  fashion  in  order 
to  encourage  him  in  future  acts  of  the  same  sort,  or  in 
order  to  dissuade  him — in  short  to  build  or  destroy  a 
habit.  This  characterization  is  part  of  the  technique 
of  influencing  the  development  of  character  and  con- 
duct. It  is  a  refinement  of  the  ordinary  reactions  of 
praise  and  blame.  After  a  time  and  to  some  extent, 
a  person  teaches  himself  to  think  of  the  results  of  act- 
ing in  this  way  or  that  before  he  acts.  He  recalls  that 
if  he  acts  this  way  or  that  some  observer,  real  or  im- 
aginary, will  attribute  to  him  noble  or  mean  disposi- 
tion, virtuous  or  vicious  motive.  Thus  he  learns  to  in- 
fluence his  own  conduct.  An  inchoate  activity  taken 
in  this  forward-looking  reference  to  results,  especially 
results  of  approbation  and  condemnation,  constitutes 
a  motive.  Instead  then  of  saying  that  a  man  requires 
a  motive  in  order  tomduce  him  to^actT^wg^hbiil?  say 
that  when  a  man  is  going  to  act  he  needs  to  know  what 
he_js  going  to  do — what  the  quality  of  his  act  is  in 
terms~c^Tconsequences  to  follow.  In  order  to  act  prop- 
erlyne  needs  to  view  his  act  as  others  view  it ;  namely, 
as  a  manifestation  of  a  character  or  will  which  is  good 
or  bad  according  as  it  is  bent  upon  specific  things  which 
are  desirable  or  obnoxious.  There  is  no  call  to  furnish 
a  man  with  incentives  to^jictivity  in  general.  But  there 
is  every  need  to  induce  him  to  guide  his  own  action  by 
an  intelligent  perception  of  its  results.  For  in  the  long 


12£          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

run  this  is  the  most  effective  way  of  influencing  activity 
to  take  this  desirable  direction  rather  than  that  ob- 
jectionable one. 

A  motive  in  short  is  simply  an  impulse  viewed  as  a 
constituent  in  a  habit,  a  factor  in  a  disposition.  In 
general  its  meaning  is  simple.  But  in  fact  motives  are 
as  numerous  as  are  original  impulsive  activities  multi- 
plied by  the  diversified  consequences  they  produce  as 
they  operate  under  diverse  conditions.  How  then  does 
it  come  about  that  current  economic  psychology  has  so 
tremendously  oversimplified  the  situation?  Why  does 
it  recognize  but  one  type  of  motive,  that  which  con- 
cerns personal  gain.  Of  course  part  of  the  answer  is 
to  be  found  in  the  natural  tendency  in  all  sciences 
toward  a  substitution  of  artificial  conceptual  simplifi- 
cations for  the  tangles  of  concrete  empirical  facts.  But 
the  significant  part  of  the  answer  has  to  do  with  the 
social  conditions  under  which  work  is  done,  conditions 
which  are  such  as  to  put  an  unnatural  emphasis  upon 
the  prospect  of  reward.  It  exemplifies  again  our  lead- 
ing proposition  that  social  customs  are  not  direct  and 
necessary  consequences  of  specific  impulses,  but  that 
social  institutions  and  expectations  shape  and  crystal- 
lize impulses  into  dominant  habits. 

The  social  peculiarity  which  explains  the  emphasis 
put  upon  profit  as  an  inducement  to  productive  serv- 
iceable work  stands  out  in  high  relief  in  the  identifica- 
tion of  work  with  labor.  For  labor  means  in  economic 
theory  something  painful,  something  so  onerously  dis- 
agreeable or  "  costly  "  that  every  individual  avoids  it 


CHANGING  HUMAN  NATURE  123 

if  he  can,  and  engages  in  it  only  because  of  the  prom- 
ise of  an  overbalancing  gain.  Thus  the  question  we  are 
invited  to  consider  is  what  the  social  condition  is  which 
makes  productive  work  uninteresting  and  toilsome. 
Why  is  the  psychology  of  the  industrialist  so  different 
from  that  of  inventor,  explorer,  artist,  sportsman, 
scientific  investigator,  physician,  teacher?  For  the 
latter  we  do  not  assert  that  activity  is  such  a  burden- 
some sacrifice  that  it  is  engaged  in  only  because  men  are 
bribed  to  act  by  hope  of  reward  or  are  coerced  by  fear 
of  loss. 

The  social  conditions  under  which  "  labor  "  is  under- 
taken have  become  so  uncongenial  to  human  nature  that 
it  is  not  undertaken  because  of  intrinsic  meaning.  It  is 
carried  on  under  conditions  which  render  it  immedi- 
ately irksome.  The  alleged  need  of  an  incentive  to  stir 
men  out  of  quiescent  inertness  is  the  need  of  an  incen- 
tive powerful  enough  to  overcome  contrary  stimuli 
which  proceed  from  the  social  conditions.  Circum- 
stances of  productive  service  now  shear  away  direct 
satisfaction  from  those  engaging  in  it.  A  real  and 
important  fact  is  thus  contained  in  current  economic 
psychology,  but  it  is  a  fact  about  existing  industrial 
conditions  and  not  a  fact  about  native,  original 
activity. 

It  is  "  natural  "  for  activity  to  be  agreeable.  It 
tends  to  find  fulfillment,  and  finding  an  ouuet  is  itself 
satisfactory,  for  it  marks  partial  accomplishment.  If 
productive  activity  has  become  so  inherently  unsatis- 
factory that  men  have  to  be  artificially  induced  to 


124          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

engage  in  it,  this  fact  is  ample  proof  that  the  condi- 
tions under  which  work  is  carried  on  balk  the  complex 
of  activities  instead  of  promoting  them,  irritate  and 
frustrate  natural  tendencies  instead  of  carrying  them 
forward  to  fruition.  Work  then  becomes  labor,  the 
consequence  of  some  aboriginal  curse  which  forces  man 
to  do  what  he  would  not  do  if  he  could  help  it,  the  out- 
come of  some  original  sin  which  excluded  man  from  a 
paradise  in  which  desire  was  satisfied  without  industry, 
compelling  him  to  pay  for  the  means  of  livelihood  with 
the  sweat  of  his  brow.  From  which  it  follows  naturally 
that  Paradise  Regained  means  the  accumulation  of  in- 
vestments such  that  a  man  can  live  upon  their  return 
without  labor.  There  is,  we  repeat,  too  much  truth  in 
this  picture.  But  it  is  not  a  truth  concerning  original 
human  nature  and  activity.  It  concerns  the  form 
human  impulses  have  taken  under  the  influence  of  a 
specific  social  environment.  If  there  are  difficulties 
in  the  way  of  social  alteration — as  there  certainly  are — 
they  do  not  lie  in  an  original  aversion  of  human  na- 
ture to  serviceable  action,  but  in  the  historic  conditions 
which  have  differentiated  the  work  of  the  laborer  for 
wage  from  that  of  the  artist,  adventurer,  sportsman, 
soldier,  administrator  and  speculator. 


IV 


War  and  the  existing  economic  regime  have  not  been 
discussed  primarily  on  their  own  account.  They  are 
crucial  cases  of  the  relation  existing  between  original 
impulse  and  acquired  habit.  They  are  so  fraught  with 
evil  consequences  that  any  one  who  is  disposed  can  heap 
up  criticisms  without  end.  Nevertheless  they  persist. 
This  persistence  constitutes  the  case  for  the  conserva- 
tive who  argues  that  such  institutions  are  rooted  in  an 
unalterable  human  nature.  A  truer  psychology  locates 
the  difficulty  elsewhere.  It  shows  that  the  trouble  lies 
in  the  inertness  of  established  habit.  No  matter  how 
accidental  and  irrational  the  circumstances  of  its 
origin,  no  matter  how  different  the  conditions  which 
now  exist  to  those  under  which  the  habit  was  formed, 
the  latter  persists  until  the  environment  obstinately 
rejects  it.  Habits  once  formed  perpetuate  themselves, 
by  acting  unremittingly  upon  the  native  stock  of  activ- 
ities. They  stimulate,  inhibit,  intensify,  weaken,  select, 
concentrate  and  organize  the  latter  into  their  own  like- 
ness. They  create  out  of  the  formless  void  of  impulses 
a  world  made  in  their  own  image.  Man  is  a  creature  of 
habit,  not  of  reason  nor  yet  of  instinct. 

Recognition  of  the  correct  psychology  locates  the 
problem  but  does  not  guarantee  its  solution.  Indeed, 
at  first  sight  it  seems  to  indicate  that  every  attempt  to 

125 


126          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

solve  the  problem  and  secure  fundamental  reorganiza- 
tions is  caught  in  a  vicious  circle.  For  the  direction 
of  native  activity  depends  upon  acquired  habits,  and 
yet  acquired  habits  can  be  modified  only  by  redirection 
of  impulses.  Existing  institutions  impose  their  stamp, 
their  superscription,  upon  impulse  and  instinct.  They 
embody  the  modifications  the  latter  have  undergone. 
How  then  can  we  get  leverage  for  changing  institu- 
tions? How  shall  impulse  exercise  that  re-adjusting 
office  which  has  been  claimed  for  it  ?  Shall  we  not  have 
to  depend  in  the  future  as  in  the  past  upon  upheaval  and 
accident  to  dislocate  customs  so  as  to  release  impulses 
to  serve  as  points  of  departure  for  new  habits? 

The  existing  psychology  of  the  industrial  worker  for 
example  is  slack,  irresponsible,  combining  a  maximum 
of  mechanical  routine  with  a  maximum  of  explosive, 
unregulated  impulsiveness.  These  things  have  been 
bred  by  the  existing  economic  system.  But  they  exist, 
and  are  formidable  obstacles  to  social  change.  We 
cannot  breed  in  men  the  desire  to  get  something  for 
as  nearly  nothing  as  possible  and  in  the  end  not  pay 
the  price.  We  satisfy  ourselves  cheaply  by  preaching 
the  charm  of  productivity  and  by  blaming  the  inherent 
selfishness  of  human  nature,  and  urging  some  great 
moral  and  religious  revival.  The  evils  point  in  reality 
to  the  necessity  of  a  change  in  economic  institutions, 
but  meantime  they  offer  serious  obstacles  to  the 
change.  At  the  same  time,  the  existing  economic  sys- 
tem has  enlisted  in  behalf  of  its  own  perpetuity  the 
managerial  and  the  technological  abilities  which  must 


serve  the  cause  of  the  laborer  if  he  is  to  be  emancipated. 
In  the  face  of  these  difficulties  other  persons  seek  an 
equally  cheap  satisfaction  in  the  thought  of  universal 
civil  war  and  revolution. 

Is  there  any  way  out  of  the  vicious  circle?  In  the 
first  place,  there  are  possibilities  resident  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  young  which  have  never  yet  been  taken 
advantage  of.  The  idea  of  universal  education  is  as 
yet  hardly  a  century  old,  and  it  is  still  much  more  of 
an  idea  than  a  fact,  when  we  take  into  account  the 
early  age  at  which  it  terminates  for  the  mass.  Also, 
thus  far  schooling  has  been  largely  utilized  as  a  con- 
venient tool  of  the  existing  nationalistic  and  economic 
regimes.  Hence  it  is  easy  to  point  out  defects  and 
perversions  in  every  existing  school  system.  It  is  easy 
for  a  critic  to  ridicule  the  religious  devotion  to  educa- 
tion which  has  characterized  for  example  the  American 
republic.  It  is  easy  to  represent  it  as  zeal  without 
knowledge,  fanatical  faith  apart  from  understanding. 
And  yet  the  cold  fact  of  the  situation  is  that  the  chief 
means  of  continuous,  graded,  economical  improvement 
and  social  rectification  lies  in  utilizing  the  opportuni- 
ties of  educating  the  young  to  modify  prevailing  types 
of  thought  and  desire. 

The  young  are  not  as  yet  as  subject  to  the  full  im- 
pact of  established  customs.  Their  life  of  impulsive 
activity  is  vivid,  flexible,  experimenting,  curious. 
Adults  have  their  habits  formed,  fixed,  at  least  com- 
paratively. They  are  the  subjects,  not  to  say  victims, 
of  an  environment  which  they  can  directly  change  only 


128         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

by  a  maximum  of  effort  and  disturbance.  They  may 
not  be  able  to  perceive  clearly  the  needed  changes,  or 
be  willing  to  pay  the  price  of  effecting  them.  Yet  they 
wish  a  different  life  for  the  generation  to  come.  In 
order  to  realize  that  wish  they  may  create  a  special 
environment  whose  main  function  is  education.  In 
order  that  education  of  the  young  be  efficacious  in  in- 
ducing an  improved  society,  it  is  not  necessary  for 
adults  to  have  a  formulated  definite  ideal  of  some  better 
state.  An  educational  enterprise  conducted  in  this 
spirit  would  probably  end  merely  in  substituting  one 
rigidity  for  another.  What  is  necessary  is  that  habits 
be  formed  which  are  more  intelligent,  more  sensitively 
percipient,  more  informed  with  foresight,  more  aware 
of  what  they  are  about,  more  direct  and  sincere,  more 
flexibly  responsive  than  those  now  current.  Then  they 
will  meet  their  own  problems  and  propose  their  own 
improvements. 

Educative  development  of  the  young  is  not  the  only 
way  in  which  the  life  of  impulse  may  be  employed  to 
effect  social  ameliorations,  though  it  is  the  least  expen- 
sive  and  most  orderly.  No  adult  environment  is  all  of 
one  piece.  The  more  complex  a  culture  is,  the  more 
certain  it  is  to  include  habits  formed  on  differing,  even 
conflicting  patterns.  Each  custom  may  be  rigid,  unin- 
telligent in  itself,  and  yet  this  rigidity  may  cause  it  to 
wear  upon  others.  The  resulting  attrition  may  release 
impulse  for  new  adventures.  The  present  time  is  con- 
spicuously a  time  of  such  internal  frictions  and  liber- 
ations. Social  life  seems  chaotic,  unorganized,  rather 


IMPULSE  AND  CONFLICT  OF  HABITS     129 

than  too  fixedly  regimented.  Political  and  legal  in- 
stitutions are  now  inconsistent  with  the  habits  that 
dominate  friendly  intercourse,  science  and  art.  Dif- 
ferent institutions  foster  antagonistic  impulses  and 
form  contrary  dispositions. 

If  we  had  to  wait  upon  exhortations  and  unembodied 
"  ideals  "  to  effect  social  alterations,  we  should  indeed 
wait  long.  But  the  conflict  of  patterns  involved  in  in- 
stitutions which  are  inharmonious  with  one  another  is 
already  producing  great  changes.  The  significant 
point  is  not  whether  modifications  shall  continue  to 
occur,  but  whether  they  shall  be  characterized  chiefly 
by  uneasiness,  discontent  and  blind  antagonistic  strug- 
gles, or  whether  intelligent  direction  may  modulate  the 
harshness  of  conflict,  and  turn  the  elements  of  disin- 
tegration into  a  constructive  synthesis.  At  all  events, 
the  social  situation  in  "  advanced  "  countries  is  such 
as  to  impart  an  air  of  absurdity  to  our  insistence  upon 
the  rigidity  of  customs.  There  are  plenty  of  persons 
to  tell  us  that  the  real  trouble  lies  in  lack  of  fixity  of 
habit  and  principle;  in  departure  from  immutable 
standards  and  structures  constituted  once  for  all.  We 
are  told  that  we  are  suffering  from  an  excess  of  instinct, 
and  from  laxity  of  habit  due  to  surrender  to  impulse 
as  a  law  of  life.  The  remedy  is  said  to  be  to  return 
from  contemporary  fluidity  to  the  stable  and  spacious 
patterns  of  a  classic  antiquity  that  observed  law  and 
proportion:  for  somehow  antiquity  is  always  classic. 
When  instability,  uncertainty,  erratic  change  are  dif- 
fused throughout  the  situation,  why  dwell  upon  the 


ISO          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

evils  of  fixed  habit  and  the  need  of  release  of  impulse 
as  an  initiator  of  reorganizations?  Why  not  rather 
condemn  impulse  and  exalt  habits  of  reverencing  order 
and  fixed  truth? 

The  question  is  natural,  but  the  remedy  suggested 
is  futile.  It  is  not  easy  to  exaggerate  the  extent  to 
which  we  now  pass  from  one  kind  of  nurture  to 
another  as  we  go  from  business  to  church,  from  science 
to  the  newspaper,  from  business  to  art,  from  compan- 
ionship to  politics,  from  home  to  school.  An  individ- 
ual is  now  subjected  to  many  conflicting  schemes  of 
education.  Hence  habits  are  divided  against  one  an- 
other, personality  is  disrupted,  the  scheme  of  conduct 
is  confused  and  disintegrated.  But  the  remedy  lies  in 
the  development  of  a  new  morale  which  can  be  attained 
only  as  released  impulses  are  intelligently  employed  to 
form  harmonious  habits  adapted  to  one  another  in  a 
new  situation.  A  laxity  due  to  decadence  of  old  habits 
cannot  be  corrected  by  exhortations  to  restore  old 
habits  in  their  former  rigidity.  Even  though  it  were 
abstractly  desirable  it  is  impossible.  And  it  is  not  de- 
sirable because  the  inflexibility  of  old  habits  is  precisely 
the  chief  cause  of  their  decay  and  disintegration. 
Plaintive  lamentations  at  the  prevalence  of  change  and 
abstract  appeals  for  restoration  of  senile  authority  are 
signs  of  personal  feebleness,  of  inability  to  cope  with 
change.  It  is  a  "  defense  reaction." 


We  may  sum  up  the  discussion  in  a  few  generalized 
statements.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  unscientific  to  try 
to  restrict  original  activities  to  a  definite  number  of 
sharply  demarcated  classes  of  instincts.  And  the  prac- 
tical result  of  this  attempt  is  injurious.  To  classify 
is,  indeed,  as  useful  as  it  is  natural.  The  indefinite 
multitude  of  particular  and  changing  events  is  met  by 
the  mind  with  acts  of  defining,  inventorying  and  listing, 
reducing  to  common  heads  and  tying  up  in  bunches. 
But  these  acts  like  other  intelligent  acts  are  performed 
for  a  purpose,  and  the  accomplishment  of  purpose  is 
their  only  justification.  Speaking  generally,  the  pur- 
pose is  to  facilitate  our  dealings  with  unique  individ- 
uals and  changing  events.  When  we  assume  that  our 
clefts  and  bunches  represent  fixed  separations  and  col- 
lections in  rerum  natura,  we  obstruct  rather  than  aid 
our  transactions  with  things.  We  are  guilty  of  a 
presumption  which  nature  promptly  punishes.  We  are 
rendered  incompetent  to  deal  effectively  with  the  deli- 
cacies and  novelties  of  nature  and  life.  Our  thought  is 
hard  where  facts  are  mobile ;  bunched  and  chunky  where 
events  are  fluid,  dissolving. 

The  tendency  to  forget  the  office  of  distinctions  and 
classifications,  and  to  take  them  as  marking  things  in 
themselves,  is  the  current  fallacy  of  scientific  spe- 

131 


132         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

cialism.  It  is  one  of  the  conspicuous  traits  of  high- 
browism,  the  essence  of  false  abstractionism.  This  at- 
titude which  once  flourished  in  physical  science  now 
governs  theorizing  about  human  nature.  Man  has  been 
resolved  into  a  definite  collection  of  primary  instincts 
which  may  be  numbered,  catalogued  and  exhaustively 
described  one  by  one.  Theorists  differ  only  or  chiefly 
as  to  their  number  and  ranking.  Some  say  one,  self- 
love  ;  some  two,  egoism  and  altruism ;  some  three,  greed, 
fear  and  glory;  while  today  writers  of  a  more  em- 
pirical turn  run  the  number  up  to  fifty  and  sixty.  But 
in  fact  there  are  as  many  specific  reactions  to  differ- 
ing stimulating  conditions  as  there  is  time  for,  and 
our  lists  are  only  classifications  for  a  purpose. 

One  of  the  great  evils  of  this  artificial  simplification 
is  its  influence  upon  social  science.  Complicated  prov- 
inces of  life  have  been  assigned  to  the  jurisdiction  of 
some  special  instinct  or  group  of  instincts,  which  has 
reigned  despotically  with  the  usual  consequences  of 
despotism.  Politics  has  replaced  religion  as  the  set  of 
phenomena  based  upon  fear;  or  after  having  been  the 
fruit  of  a  special  Aristotelian  political  faculty,  has  be- 
come the  necessary  condition  of  restraining  man's  self- 
seeking  impulse.  All  sociological  facts  are  disposed  of 
in  a  few  fat  volumes  as  products  of  imitation  and  in- 
vention, or  of  cooperation  and  conflict.  Ethics  rest 
upon  sympathy,  pity,  benevolence.  Economics  is  the 
science  of  phenomena  due  to  one  love  and  one  aversion 
— gain  and  labor.  It  is  surprising  that  men  can  engage 
in  these  enterprises  without  being  reminded  of  their  ex- 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  133 

act  similarity  to  natural  science  before  scientific  method 
was  discovered  in  the  seventeenth  century.  Just  now 
another  simplification  is  current.  All  instincts  go  back 
to  the  sexual,  so  that  cherchez  la  femme  (under  multi- 
tudinous symbolic  disguises)  is  the  last  word  of  science 
with  respect  to  the  analysis  of  conduct. 

Some  sophisticated  simplifications  which  once  had 
great  influence  are  now  chiefly  matters  of  historic  mo- 
ment. Even  so  they  are  instructive.  They  show  how 
social  conditions  put  a  heavy  load  on  certain  tendencies, 
so  that  in  the  end  an  acquired  disposition  is  treated 
as  if  it  were  an  original,  and  almost  the  only  original 
activity.  Consider,  for  example,  the  burden  of  causal 
power  placed  by  Hobbes  upon  the  reaction  of  fear.  To 
a  man  living  with  reasonable  security  and  comfort  to- 
day, Hobbes'  pervasive  consciousness  of  fear  seems  like 
the  idiosyncrasy  of  an  abnormally  timid  temperament. 
But  a  survey  of  the  conditions  of  his  own  time,  of  the 
disorders  which  bred  general  distrust  and  antagonism, 
which  led  to  brutal  swashbuckling  and  disintegrating 
intrigue,  puts  the  matter  on  a  different  footing.  The 
social  situation  conduced  to  fearfulness.  As  an  account 
of  the  psychology  of  the  natural  man  his  theory  is  un- 
sound. As  a  report  of  contemporary  social  condi- 
tions there  is  much  to  be  said  for  it. 

Something  of  the  same  sort  may  be  said  regarding 
the  emphasis  of  eighteenth  century  moralists  upon 
benevolence  as  the  inclusive  moral  spring  to  action,  an 
emphasis  represented  in  the  nineteenth  century  by 
Comte's  exaltation  of  altruism.  The  load  was  excessive. 


134         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

But  it  testifies  to  the  growth  of  a  new  philanthropic 
spirit.  With  the  breaking  down  of  feudal  barriers  and 
a  consequent  mingling  of  persons  previously  divided, 
a  sense  of  responsibility  for  the  happiness  of  others, 
for  the  mitigation  of  misery,  grew  up.  Conditions  were 
not  ripe  for  its  translation  into  political  action.  Hence 
the  importance  attached  to  the  private  disposition  of 
voluntary  benevolence. 

If  we  venture  into  more  ancient  history,  Plato's 
threefold  division  of  the  human  soul  into  a  rational 
element,  a  spirited  active  one,  and  an  appetitive  one, 
aiming  at  increase  or  gain,  is  immensely  illuminating. 
As  is  well  known,  Plato  said  that  society  is  the  human 
soul  writ  large.  In  society  he  found  three  classes :  the 
philosophic  and  scientific,  the  soldier-citizenry,  and  the 
traders  and  artisans.  Hence  the  generalization  as  to 
the  three  dominating  forces  in  human  nature.  Read 
the  other  way  around,  we  perceive  that  trade  in  his  days 
appealed  especially  to  concupiscence,  citizenship  to  a 
generous  elan  of  self-forgetting  loyalty,  and  scientific 
study  to  a  disinterested  love  of  wisdom  that  seemed  to 
be  monopolized  by  a  small  isolated  group.  The  dis- 
tinctions were  not  in  truth  projected  from  the  breast 
of  the  natural  individual  into  society,  but  they  were 
cultivated  in  classes  of  individuals  by  force  of  social 
custom  and  expectation. 

Now  the  prestige  that  once  attached  to  the  "  in- 
stinct "  of  self-love  has  not  wholly  vanished.  The  case 
is  still  worth  examination.  In  its  "  scientific  "  form, 
start  was  taken  from  an  alleged  instinct  of  self- 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  135 

preservation,  characteristic  of  man  as  well  as  of  other 
animals.  From  this  seemingly  innocuous  assumption,  a 
mythological  psychology  burgeoned.  Animals,  including 
man,  certainly  perform  many  acts  whose  consequence  is 
to  protect  and  preserve  life.  If  their  acts  did  not  upon 
the  whole  have  this  tendency,  neither  the  individual  or 
the  species  would  long  endure.  The  acts  that  spring 
from  life  also  in  the  main  conserve  life.  Such  is  the  un- 
doubted fact.  What  does  the  statement  amount  to? 
Simply  the  truism  that  life  is  life,  that  life  is  a  con- 
tinuing activity  as  long  as  it  is  life  at  all.  But  the 
self-love  school  converted  the  fact  that  life  tends  to 
maintain  life  into  a  separate  and  special  force  which 
somehow  lies  back  of  life  and  accounts  for  its  various 
acts.  An  animal  exhibits  in  its  life-activity  a  multitude 
of  acts  of  breathing,  digesting,  secreting,  excreting,  at- 
tack, defense,  search  for  food,  etc.,  a  multitude  of  spe- 
cific responses  to  specific  stimulations  of  the  environ- 
ment. But  mythology  comes  in  and  attributes  them 
all  to  a  nisus  for  self-preservation.  Thence  it  is  but  a 
step  to  the  idea  that  all  conscious  acts  are  prompted 
by  self-love.  This  premiss  is  then  elaborated  in  in- 
genious schemes,  often  amusing  when  animated  by  a 
cynical  knowledge  of  the  "  world,"  tedious  when  of  a 
would-be  logical  nature,  to  prove  that  every  act  of  man 
including  his  apparent  generosities  is  a  variation 
played  on  the  theme  of  self-interest. 

The  fallacy  is  obvious.  Because  an  animal  cannot 
live  except  as  it  is  alive,  except  that  is  as  its  acts  have 
the  result  of  sustaining  life,  it  is  concluded  that  all  its 


136          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

acts  are  instigated  by  an  impulse  to  self-preservation. 
Since  all  acts  affect  the  well-being  of  their  agent  in  one 
way  or  another,  and  since  when  a  person  becomes  re- 
flective he  prefers  consequences  in  the  way  of  weal  to 
those  of  woe,  therefore  all  his  acts  are  due  to  self-love. 
In  actual  substance,  one  statement  says  that  life  is  life ; 
and  the  other  says  that  a  self  is  a  self.  One  says  that 
special  acts  are  acts  of  a  living  creature  and  the  other 
that  they  are  acts  of  a  self.  In  the  biological  statement 
the  concrete  diversity  between  the  acts  of  say  a  clam 
and  of  a  dog  are  covered  up  by  pointing  out  that  the 
acts  of  each  tend  to  self-preservation,  ignoring  the 
somewhat  important  fact  that  in  one  case  it  is  the  life 
of  a  clam  and  in  the  other  the  life  of  a  dog  which  is 
continued.  In  morals,  the  concrete  differences  between 
a  Jesus,  a  Peter,  a  John  and  a  Judas  are  covered  up 
by  the  wise  remark  that  after  all  they  are  all  selves  and 
all  act  as  selves.  In  every  case,  a  result  or  "  end  "  is 
treated  as  an  actuating  cause. 

The  fallacy  consists  in  transforming  the  (truistic) 
fact  of  acting  as  a  self  into  the  fiction  of  acting  always 
for  self.  Every  act,  truistically  again,  tends  to  a  cer- 
tain fulfilment  or  satisfaction  of  some  habit  which  is 
an  undoubted  element  in  the  structure  of  character. 
Each  satisfaction  is  qualitatively  what  it  is  because  of 
the  disposition  fulfilled  in  the  object  attained,  treachery 
or  loyalty,  mercy  or  cruelty.  But  theory  comes  in  and 
blankets  the  tremendous  diversity  in  the  quality  of  the 
satisfactions  which  are  experienced  by  pointing  out  that 
they  are  all  satisfactions.  The  harm  done  is  then  com- 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  137 

pleted  by  transforming  this  artificial  unity  of  result 
into  an  original  love  of  satisfaction  as  the  force  that 
generates  all  acts  alike.  Because  a  Nero  and  a  Peabody 
both  get  satisfaction  in  acting  as  they  do  it  is  inferred 
that  the  satisfaction  of  each  is  the  same  in  quality,  and 
that  both  were  actuated  by  love  of  the  same  objective. 
In  reality  the  more  we  concretely  dwell  upon  the  com- 
mon fact  of  fulfilment,  the  more  we  realize  the  differ- 
ence in  the  kinds  of  selves  fulfilled.  In  pointing  out 
that  both  the  north  and  the  south  poles  are  poles  we 
do  not  abolish  the  difference  of  north  from  south;  we 
accentuate  it. 

The  explanation  of  the  fallacy  is  however  too  easy 
to  be  convincing.  There  must  have  been  some  material, 
empirical  reason  why  intelligent  men  were  so  easily  en- 
trapped by  a  fairly  obvious  fallacy.  That  material 
error  was  a  belief  in  the  fixity  and  simplicity  of  the 
self,  a  belief  which  had  been  fostered  by  a  school  far 
removed  from  the  one  in  question,  the  theologians  with 
their  dogma  of  the  unity  and  ready-made  completeness 
of  the  soul.  We  arrive  at  true  conceptions  of  motiva- 
tion and  interest  only  by  the  recognition  that  selfhood 
(except  as  it  has  encased  itself  in  a  shell  of  routine) 
is  in  process  of  making,  and  that  any  self  is  capable  of 
including  within  itself  a  number  of  inconsistent  selves, 
of  unharmonized  dispositions.  Even  a  Nero  may  be 
capable  upon  occasion  of  acts  of  kindness.  It  is  even 
conceivable  that  under  certain  circumstances  he  may  be 
appalled  by  the  consequences  of  cruelty,  and  turn  to  the 
fostering  of  kindlier  impulses.  A  sympathetic  person  is 


138          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

not  immune  to  harsh  arrogances,  and  he  may  find  him- 
self involved  in  so  much  trouble  as  a  consequence  of  a 
kindly  act,  that  he  allows  his  generous  impulses  to 
shrivel  and  henceforth  governs  his  conduct  by  the  dic- 
tates of  the  strictest  worldly  prudence.  Inconsistencies 
and  shiftings  in  character  are  the  commonest  things  in 
experience.  Only  the  hold  of  a  traditional  conception 
of  the  singleness  and  simplicity  of  soul  and  self  blinds 
us  to  perceiving  what  they  mean:  the  relative  fluidity 
and  diversity  of  the  constituents  of  selfhood.  There 
is  no  one  ready-made  self  behind  activities.  There  are 
complex,  unstable,  opposing  attitudes,  habits,  impulses 
which  gradually  come  to  terms  with  one  another,  and 
assume  a  certain  consistency  of  configuration,  even 
though  only  by  means  of  a  distribution  of  inconsis- 
tencies which  keeps  them  in  water-tight  compartments, 
giving  them  separate  turns  or  tricks  in  action. 

Many  good  words  get  spoiled  when  the  word  self  is 
prefixed  to  them:  Words  like  pity,  confidence,  sacrifice, 
control,  love.  The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  word 
self  infects  them  with  a  fixed  introversion  and  isolation. 
It  implies  that  the  act  of  love  or  trust  or  control  is 
turned  back  upon  a  self  which  already  is  in  full  exist- 
ence and  in  whose  behalf  the  act  operates.  Pity  fulfils 
and  creates  a  self  when  it  is  directed  outward,  opening 
the  mind  to  new  contacts  and  receptions.  Pity  for  self 
withdraws  the  mind  back  into  itself,  rendering  its  sub- 
ject unable  to  learn  from  the  buffetings  of  fortune. 
Sacrifice  may  enlarge  a  self  by  bringing  about  surren- 
der of  acquired  possessions  to  requirements  of  new 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  139 

growth.  Self-sacrifice  means  a  self-maiming  which  asks 
for  compensatory  pay  in  some  later  possession  or  in- 
dulgence. Confidence  as  an  outgoing  act  is  directness 
and  courage  in  meeting  the  facts  of  life,  trusting  them 
to  bring  instruction  and  support  to  a  developing  self. 
Confidence  which  terminates  in  the  self  means  a  smug 
complacency  that  renders  a  person  obtuse  to  instruc- 
tion by  events.  Control  means  a  command  of  resources 
that  enlarges  the  self;  self-control  denotes  a  self  which 
is  contracting,  concentrating  itself  upon  its  own 
achievements,  hugging  them  tight,  and  thereby  estop- 
ping the  growth  that  comes  when  the  self  is  generously 
released;  a  self-conscious  moral  athleticism  that  ends 
in  a  disproportionate  enlargement  of  some  organ. 

What  makes  the  difference  in  each  of  these  cases  is 
the  difference  between  a  self  taken  as  something  already 
made  and  a  self  still  making  through  action.  In  the 
former  case,  action  has  to  contribute  profit  or  secur- 
ity or  consolation  to  a  self.  In  the  latter,  impulsive 
action  becomes  an  adventure  in  discovery  of  a  self 
which  is  possible  but  as  yet  unrealized,  an  experiment  in 
creating  a  self  which  shall  be  more  inclusive  than  the 
one  which  exists.  The  idea  that  only  those  impulses 
have  moral  validity  which  aim  at  the  welfare  of  others, 
or  are  altruistic,  is  almost  as  one-sided  a  doctrine  as 
the  dogma  of  self-love.  Yet  altruism  has  one  marked 
superiority;  it  at  least  suggests  a  generosity  of  out- 
going action,  a  liberation  of  power  as  against  the  close, 
pent  in,  protected  atmosphere  of  a  ready-made  ego. 

The  reduction  of  all  impulses  to  forms  of  self-lova 


140          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

is  worth  investigation  because  it  gives  an  opportunity 
to  say  something  about  self  as  an  ongoing  process.  The 
doctrine  itself  is  faded,  its  advocates  are  belated.  The 
notion  is  too  tame  to  appeal  to  a  generation  that  has 
experienced  romanticism  and  has  been  intoxicated  by 
imbibing  from  the  streams  of  power  released  by  the 
industrial  revolution.  The  fashionable  unification  of 
today  goes  by  the  name  of  the  will  to  power. 

In  the  beginning,  this  is  hardly  more  than  a  name  for 
a  quality  of  all  activity.  Every  fulfilled  activity  ter- 
minates in  added  control  of  conditions,  in  an  art  of 
administering  objects.  Execution,  satisfaction,  reali- 
zation, fulfilment  are  all  names  for  the  fact  that  an 
activity  implies  an  accomplishment  which  is  possible 
only  by  subduing  circumstance  to  serve  as  an  accom- 
plice of  achievement.  Each  impulse  or  habit  is  thus 
a  will  to  its  (mm  power.  To  say  this  is  to  clothe  a 
truism  in  a  figure.  It  says  that  anger  or  fear  or  love 
or  hate  is  successful  when  it  effects  some  change  out- 
side the  organism  which  measures  its  force  and  regis- 
ters its  efficiency.  The  achieved  outcome  marks  the 
difference  between  action  and  a  cooped-up  sentiment 
which  is  expended  upon  itself.  The  eye  hungers  for 
light,  the  ear  for  sound,  the  hand  for  surfaces,  the  arm 
for  things  to  reach,  throw  and  lift,  the  leg  for  distance, 
anger  for  an  enemy  to  destroy,  curiosity  for  something 
to  shiver  and  cower  before,  love  for  a  mate.  Each  im- 
pulse is  a  demand  for  an  object  which  will  enable  it  to 
function.  Denied  an  object  in  reality  it  tends  to  create 
one  in  fancy,  as  pathology  shows. 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  141 

So  far  we  have  no  generalized  will  to  power,  but  only 
the  inherent  pressure  of  every  activity  for  an  adequate 
manifestation.  It  is  not  so  much  a  demand  for  power 
as  search  for  an  opportunity  to  use  a  power  already 
existing.  If  opportunities  corresponded  to  the  need, 
a  desire  -for  power  would  hardly  arise :  power  would  be 
used  and  satisfaction  would  accrue.  But  impulse  is 
balked.  If  conditions  are  right  for  an  educative 
growth,  the  snubbed  impulse  will  be  "  sublimated." 
That  is,  it  will  become  a  contributory  factor  in  some 
more  inclusive  and  complex  activity,  in  which  it 
is  reduced  to  a  subordinate  yet  effectual  place.  Some- 
times however  frustration  dams  activity  up,  and  inten- 
sifies it.  A  longing  for  satisfaction  at  any  cost  is  en- 
gendered. And  when  social  conditions  are  such  that 
the  path  of  least  resistance  lies  through  subjugation 
of  the  energies  of  others,  the  will  to  power  bursts  into 
flower. 

This  explains  why  we  attribute  a  will  to  power  to 
others  but  not  to  ourselves,  except  in  the  complimen- 
tary sense  that  being  strong  we  naturally  wish  to  exer- 
cise our  strength.  Otherwise  for  ourselves  we  only 
want  what  we  want  when  we  want  it,  not  being  over- 
scrupulous about  the  means  we  take  to  get  it.  This 
psychology  is  naive  but  it  is  truer  to  facts  than  the 
supposition  that  there  exists  by  itself  as  a  separate  and 
original  thing  a  will  to  power.  For  it  indicates  that 
the  real  fact  is  some  existing  power  which  demands  out- 
let, and  which  becomes  self-conscious  only  when  it  is 
too  weak  to  overcome  obstacles.  Conventionally  the 


142          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

will  to  power  is  imputed  only  to  a  comparatively  small 
number  of  ambitious  and  ruthless  men.  They  are  prob- 
ably upon  the  whole  quite  unconscious  of  any  such  will, 
being  mastered  by  specific  intense  impulses  that  find 
their  realization  most  readily  by  bending  others  to  serve 
as  tools  of  their  aims.  Self-conscious  will  to  power 
is  found  mainly  in  those  who  have  a  so-called  inferiority 
complex,  and  who  would  compensate  for  a  sense  of  per- 
sonal disadvantage  (acquired  early  in  childhood)  by 
making  a  striking  impression  upon  others,  in  the  reflex 
of  which  they  feel  their  strength  appreciated.  The 
literateur  who  has  to  take  his  action  out  in  imagina- 
tion is  much  more  likely  to  evince  a  will  to  power  than 
a  Napoleon  who  sees  definite  objects  with  extraordinary 
clearness  and  who  makes  directly  for  them.  Explosive 
irritations,  naggings,  the  obstinacy  of  weak  persons, 
dreams  of  grandeur,  the  violence  of  those  usually  sub- 
missive are  the  ordinary  marks  of  a  will  to  power. 

Discussion  of  the  false  simplification  involved  in  this 
doctrine  suggests  another  unduly  fixed  and  limited 
classification.  Critics  of  the  existing  economic  regime 
have  divided  instincts  into  the  creative  and  the  acquis- 
itive, and  have  condemned  the  present  order  because  it 
embodies  the  latter  at  the  expense  of  the  former.  The 
division  is  convenient,  yet  mistaken.  Convenient  be- 
cause it  sums  up  certain  facts  of  the  present  system, 
mistaken  because  it  takes  social  products  for  psycho- 
logical originals.  Speaking  roughly  we  may  say  that 
native  activity  is  both  creative  and  acquisitive,  creative 
as  a  process,  acquisitive  in  that  it  terminates  as  a  rule 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  143 

in  some  tangible  product  which  brings  the  process  to 
consciousness  of  itself. 

Activity  is  creative  in  so  far  as  it  moves  to  its  own 
enrichment  as  activity,  that  is,  bringing  along  with  it- 
self a  release  of  further  activities.  Scientific  inquiry, 
artistic  production,  social  companionship  possess  this 
trait  to  a  marked  degree ;  some  amount  of  it  is  a  normal 
accompaniment  of  all  successfully  coordinated  action. 
While  from  the  standpoint  of  what  precedes  it  is  a 
fulfilment,  it  is  a  liberative  expansion  with  respect  to 
what  comes  after.  There  is  here  no  antagonism  between 
creative  expression  and  the  production  of  results  which 
endure  and  which  give  a  sense  of  accomplishment. 
Architecture  at  its  best,  for  example,  would  probably 
appear  to  most  persons  to  be  more  creative,  not  less, 
than  dancing  at  its  best.  There  is  nothing  in  industrial 
production  which  of  necessity  excludes  creative  activ- 
ity. The  fact  that  it  terminates  in  tangible  utilities  no 
more  lowers  its  status  than  the  uses  of  a  bridge  exclude 
creative  art  from  a  share  in  its  design  and  construction. 
What  requires  explanation  is  why  process  is  so  definitely 
subservient  to  product  in  so  much  of  modern  indus- 
try:— that  is,  why  later  use  rather  than  present 
achieving  is  the  emphatic  thing.  The  answer  seems  to 
be  twofold. 

An  increasingly  large  portion  of  economic  work  is 
done  with  machines.  As  a  rule,  these  machines  are  not 
under  the  personal  control  of  those  who  operate  them. 
The  machines  are  operated  for  ends  which  the  worker 
has  no  share  in  forming  and  in  which  as  such,  or  apart 


144          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

from  his  wage,  he  has  no  interest.  He  neither  under- 
stands the  machines  nor  cares  for  their  purpose.  He  is 
engaged  in  an  activity  in  which  means  are  cut  off  from 
ends,  instruments  from  what  they  achieve.  Highly 
mechanized  activity  tends  as  Emerson  said  to  turn  men 
into  spiders  and  needles.  But  if  men  understand  what 
they  are  about,  if  they  see  the  whole  process  of  which 
their  special  work  is  a  necessary  part,  and  if  they  have 
concern,  care,  for  the  whole,  then  the  mechanizing  ef- 
fect is  counteracted.  But  when  a  man  is  only  the  tender 
of  a  machine,  he  can  have  no  insight  and  no  affection ; 
creative  activity  is  out  of  the  question. 

What  remains  to  the  workman  is  however  not  so  much 
acquisitive  desires  as  love  of  security  and  a  wish  for 
a  good  time.  An  excessive  premium  on  security  springs 
from  the  precarious  conditions  of  the  workman ;  desire 
for  a  good  time,  so  far  as  it  needs  any  explanation, 
from  demand  for  relief  from  drudgery,  due  to  the  ab- 
sence of  culturing  factors  in  the  work  done.  Instead  of 
acquisition  being  a  primary  end,  the  net  effect  of  the 
process  is  rather  to  destroy  sober  care  for  materials 
and  products ;  to  induce  careless  wastefulness,  so  far 
as  that  can  be  indulged  in  without  lessening  the  weekly 
wage.  From  the  standpoint  of  orthodox  economic 
theory,  the  most  surprising  thing  about  modern  indus- 
try is  the  small  number  of  persons  who  have  any  ef- 
fective interest  in  acquisition  of  wealth.  This  disre- 
gard for  acquisition  makes  it  easier  for  a  few  who  do 
want  to  have  things  their  own  way,  and  who  monopolize 
what  is  amassed.  If  an  acquisitive  impulse  were  only 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  145 

more  evenly  developed,  more  of  a  real  fact,  than  it  is,  it 
it  quite  possible  that  things  would  be  better  than  they 
are. 

Even  with  respect  to  men  who  succeed  in  accumulat- 
ing wealth  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  acquisitive- 
ness plays  with  most  of  them  a  large  role,  beyond  get- 
ting control  of  the  tools  of  the  game.  Acquisition  is 
necessary  as  an  outcome,  but  it  arises  not  from  love  of 
accumulation  but  from  the  fact  that  without  a  large 
stock  of  possessions  one  cannot  engage  effectively  in 
modern  business.  It  is  an  incident  of  love  of  power,  of 
desire  to  impress  fellows,  to  obtain  prestige,  to  secure 
influence,  to  manifest  ability,  to  "  succeed  "  in  short 
under  the  conditions  of  the  given  regime.  And  if  we 
are  to  shove  a  mythological  psychology  of  instincts  be- 
hind modern  economics,  we  should  do  better  to  invent 
instincts  for  security,  a  good  time,  power  and  success 
than  to  rely  upon  an  acquisitive  instinct.  We  should 
have  also  to  give  much  weight  to  a  peculiar  sporting 
instinct.  Not  acquiring  dollars,  but  chasing  them, 
hunting  them  is  the  important  thing.  Acquisition  has 
its  part  in  the  big  game,  for  even  the  most  devoted 
sportsman  prefers,  other  things  being  equal,  to  bring 
home  the  fox's  brush.  A  tangible  result  is  the  mark  to 
one's  self  and  to  others  of  success  in  sport. 

Instead  of  dividing  sharply  an  acquisitive  impulse 
manifested  in  business  and  a  creative  instinct  displayed 
in  science,  art  and  social  fellowship,  we  should  rather 
first  inquire  why  it  is  that  so  much  of  creative  activity 
is  in  our  day  diverted  into  business,  and  then  ask  why 


146          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

it  is  that  opportunity  for  exercise  of  the  creative  ca- 
pacity in  business  is  now  restricted  to  such  a  small 
class,  those  who  have  to  do  with  banking,  finding  a 
market,  and  manipulating  investments ;  and  finally  ask 
why  creative  activity  is  perverted  into  an  over-special- 
ized and  frequently  inhumane  operation.  For  after  all 
it  is  not  the  bare  fact  of  creation  but  its  quality  which 
counts. 

That  captains  of  industry  are  creative  artists  of  a 
sort,  and  that  industry  absorbs  an  undue  share  of  the 
creative  activity  of  the  present  time  cannot  be  denied. 
To  impute  to  the  leaders  of  industry  and  commerce 
simply  an  acquisitive  motive  is  not  merely  to  lack  in- 
sight into  their  conduct,  but  it  is  to  lose  the  clew  to 
bettering  conditions.  For  a  more  proportionate  dis- 
tribution of  creative  power  between  business  and  other 
occupations,  and  a  more  humane,  wider  use  of  it  in 
business  depend  upon  grasping  aright  the  forces  actu- 
ally at  work.  Industrial  leaders  combine  interest  in 
making  far-reaching  plans,  large  syntheses  of  condi- 
tions based  upon  study,  mastery  of  refined  and  complex 
technical  skill,  control  over  natural  forces  and  events, 
with  love  of  adventure,  excitement  and  mastery  of  fel- 
low-men. When  these  interests  are  reinforced  with 
actual  command  of  all  the  means  of  luxury,  of  display 
and  procuring  admiration  from  the  less  fortunate,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  creative  force  is  drafted  largely 
into  business  channels,  and  that  competition  for  an  op- 
portunity to  display  power  becomes  brutal. 

The  strategic  question,  as  was  said,  is  to  understand 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  INSTINCTS  147 

how  and  why  political,  legal,  scientific  and  educational 
conditions  of  society  for  the  last  centuries  have  stim- 
ulated and  nourished  such  a  one-sided  development  of 
creative  activities.  To  approach  the  problem  from 
this  point  of  view  is  much  more  hopeful,  though  infin- 
itely more  complex  intellectually,  than  the  approach 
which  sets  out  with  a  fixed  dualism  between  acquisitive 
and  creative  impulses.  The  latter  assumes  a  complete 
split  of  higher  and  lower  in  the  original  constitution  of 
man.  Were  this  the  case,  there  would  be  no  organic 
remedy.  The  sole  appeal  would  be  to  sentimental  ex- 
hortation to  men  to  wean  themselves  from  devotion  to 
the  things  which  are  beloved  by  their  lower  and  material 
nature.  And  if  the  appeal  were  moderately  successful 
the  social  result  would  be  a  fixed  class  division.  There 
would  remain  a  lower  class,  superciliously  looked  down 
upon  by  the  higher,  consisting  of  those  in  whom  the 
acquisitive  instinct  remains  stronger  and  who  do  the 
necessary  work  of  life,  while  the  higher  "  creative " 
class  devotes  itself  to  social  intercourse,  science  and 
art. 

Since  the  underlying  psychology  is  wrong,  the  prob- 
lem and  its  solution  assumes  in  fact  a  radically  differ- 
ent form.  There  are  an  indefinite  number  of  original 
or  instinctive  activities,  which  are  organized  into  inter- 
ests and  dispositions  according  to  the  situations  to 
which  they  respond.  To  increase  the  creative  phase 
and  the  humane  quality  of  these  activities  is  an  affair 
of  modifying  the  social  conditions  which  stimulate,  se- 
lect, intensify,  weaken  and  coordinate  native  activities. 


148          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

The  first  step  in  dealing  with  it  is  to  increase  our  de- 
tailed scientific  knowledge.  We  need  to  know  exactly 
the  selective  and  directive  force  of  each  social  situation ; 
exactly  how  each  tendency  is  promoted  and  retarded. 
Command  of  the  physical  environment  on  a  large  and 
deliberate  scale  did  not  begin  until  belief  in  gross  forces 
and  entities  was  abandoned.  Control  of  physical  en- 
ergies is  due  to  inquiry  which  establishes  specific  cor- 
relations between  minute  elements.  It  will  not  be  other- 
wise with  social  control  and  adjustment.  Having  the 
knowledge  we  may  set  hopefully  at  work  upon  a  course 
of  social  invention  and  experimental  engineering.  A 
study  of  the  educative  effect,  the  influence  upon  habit, 
of  each  definite  form  of  human  intercourse,  is  pre- 
requisite to  effective  reform. 


VI 


In  spite  of  what  has  been  said,  it  will  be  asserted  that 
there  are  definite,  independent,  original  instincts  which 
manifest  themselves  in  specific  acts  in  a  one-to-one 
correspondence.  Fear,  it  will  be  said,  is  a  reality,  and 
so  is  anger,  and  rivalry,  and  love  of  mastery  of  others, 
and  self-abasement,  maternal  love,  sexual  desire,  gre- 
gariousness  and  envy,  and  each  has  its  own  appropriate 
deed  as  a  result.  Of  course  they  are  realities.  So  are 
suction,  rusting  of  metals,  thunder  and  lightning  and 
lighter-than-air  flying  machines.  But  science  and  in- 
vention did  not  get  on  as  long  as  men  indulged  in  the 
notion  of  special  forces  to  account  for  such  phenomena. 
Men  tried  that  road,  and  it  only  led  them  into  learned 
ignorance.  They  spoke  of  nature's  abhorrence  of  a 
vacuum;  of  a  force  of  combustion;  of  intrinsic  nisus 
toward  this  and  that ;  of  heaviness  and  levity  as  forces. 
It  turned  out  that  these  "  forces  "  were  only  the  phe- 
nomena over  again,  translated  from  a  specific  and  con- 
crete form  (in  which  they  were  at  least  actual)  into  a 
generalized  form  in  which  they  were  verbal.  They  con- 
verted a  problem  into  a  solution  which  afforded  a  sim- 
ulated satisfaction. 

Advance  in  insight  and  control  came  only  when  the 
mind  turned  squarely  around.  After  it  had  dawned 
upon  inquirers  that  their  alleged  causal  forces  were  only 

149 


150          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

names  which  condensed  into  a  duplicate  form  a  variety 
of  complex  occurrences,  they  set  about  breaking  up 
phenomena  into  minute  detail  and  searching  for  corre- 
lations, that  is,  for  elements  in  other  gross  phenomena 
which  also  varied.  Correspondence  of  variations  of 
elements  took  the  place  of  large  and  imposing  forces. 
The  psychology  of  behavior  is  only  beginning  to  un- 
dergo similar  treatment.  It  is  probable  that  the  vogue 
of  sensation-psychology  was  due  to  the  fact  that  it 
seemed  to  promise  a  similar  detailed  treatment  of  per- 
sonal phenomena.  But  as  yet  we  tend  to  regard  sex, 
hunger,  fear,  and  even  much  more  complex  active  in- 
terests as  if  they  were  lump  forces,  like  the  combustion 
or  gravity  of  old-fashioned  physical  science. 

It  is  not  hard  to  see  how  the  notion  of  a  single  and 
separate  tendency  grew  up  in  the  case  of  simpler  acts 
like  hunger  and  sex.  The  paths  of  motor  outlet  or  dis- 
charge are  comparatively  few  and  are  fairly  well  de- 
fined. Specific  bodily  organs  are  conspicuously  in- 
volved. Hence  there  is  suggested  the  notion  of  a  cor- 
respondingly separate  psychic  force  or  impulse.  There 
are  two  fallacies  in  this  assumption.  The  first  con- 
sists in  ignoring  the  fact  that  no  activity  (even  one 
that  is  limited  by  routine  habit)  is  confined  to  the 
channel  which  is  most  flagrantly  involved  in  its  execu- 
tion. The  whole  organism  is  concerned  in  every  act  to 
some  extent  and  in  some  fashion,  internal  organs  as 
well  as  muscular,  those  of  circulation,  secretion,  etc. 
Since  the  total  state  of  the  organism  is  never  exactly 
twice  alike,  in  so  far  the  phenomena  of  hunger  and  sex 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  151 

are  never  twice  the  same  in  fact.  The  difference  may 
be  negligible  for  some  purposes,  and  yet  give  the  key 
for  the  purposes  of  a  psychological  analysis  which  shall 
terminate  in  a  correct  judgment  of  value.  Even 
physiologically  the  context  of  organic  changes  accom- 
panying an  act  of  hunger  or  sex  makes  the  difference 
between  a  normal  and  a  morbid  phenomenon. 

In  the  second  place,  the  environment  in  which  the  act 
takes  place  is  never  twice  alike.  Even  when  the  overt 
organic  discharge  is  substantially  the  same,  the  acts 
impinge  upon  a  different  environment  and  thus  have 
different  consequences.  It  is  impossible  to  regard 
these  differences  of  objective  result  as  indifferent  to 
the  quality  of  the  acts.  They  are  immediately 
sensed  if  not  clearly  perceived;  and  they  are  the 
only  components  of  the  meaning  of  the  act.  When 
feelings,  dwelling  antecedently  in  the  soul,  were  sup- 
posed to  be  the  causes  of  acts,  it  was  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  each  psychic  element  had  its  own  inherent 
quality  which  might  be  directly  read  off  by  introspec- 
tion. But  when  we  surrender  this  notion,  it  becomes 
evident  that  the  only  way  of  telling  what  an  organic 
act  is  like  is  by  the  sensed  or  perceptible  changes  which 
it  occasions.  Some  of  these  will  be  intra-organic,  and 
(as  just  indicated)  they  will  vary  with  every  act. 
Others  will  be  external  to  the  organism,  and  these  con- 
sequences are  more  important  than  the  intra-organic 
ones  for  determining  the  quality  of  the  act.  For  they 
are  consequences  in  which  others  are  concerned  and 
which  evoke  reactions  of  favor  and  disfavor  as  well  as 


152          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

cooperative  and  resisting  activities  of  a  more  indirect 
sort. 

Most  so-called  self-deception  is  due  to  employing 
immediate  organic  states  as  criteria  of  the  value  of 
an  act.  To  say  that  it  feels  good  or  yields  direct  sat- 
isfaction is  to  say  that  it  gives  rise  to  a  comfortable 
internal  state.  The  judgment  based  upon  this  experi- 
ence may  be  entirely  different  from  the  judgment  passed 
by  others  upon  the  basis  of  its  objective  or  social  con- 
sequences. As  a  matter  of  even  the  most  rudimentary 
precaution,  therefore,  every  person  learns  to  recognize 
to  some  extent  the  quality  of  an  act  on  the  basis  of  its 
consequences  in  the  acts  of  others.  But  even  without 
this  judgment,  the  exterior  changes  produced  by  an  act 
are  immediately  sensed,  and  being  associated  with  the 
act  become  a  part  of  its  quality.  Even  a  young  child 
sees  the  smash  of  things  occasionally  by  his  anger,  and 
the  smash  may  compete  with  his  satisfied  feeling  of  dis- 
charged energy  as  an  index  of  value. 

A  child  gives  way  to  what,  grossly  speaking,  we  call 
anger.  Its  felt  or  appreciated  quality  depends  in  the 
first  place  upon  the  condition  of  his  organism  at  the 
time,  and  this  is  never  twice  alike.  In  the  second  place, 
the  act  is  at  once  modified  by  the  environment  upon 
which  it  impinges  so  that  different  consequences  are 
immediately  reflected  back  to  the  doer.  In  one  case, 
anger  is  directed  say  at  older  and  stronger  playmates 
who  immediately  avenge  themselves  upon  the  offender, 
perhaps  cruelly.  In  another  case,  it  takes  effect  upon 
weaker  and  impotent  children,  and  the  reflected  ap- 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  153 

predated  consequence  is  one  of  achievement,  victory, 
power  and  a  knowledge  of  the  means  of  having  one's  own 
way.  The  notion  that  anger  still  remains  a  single 
force  is  a  lazy  mythology.  Even  in  the  cases  of  hunger 
and  sex,  where  the  channels  of  action  are  fairly  demar- 
cated by  antecedent  conditions  (or  "nature"),  the 
actual  content  and  feel  of  hunger  and  sex,  are  indefi- 
nitely varied  according  to  their  social  contexts.  Only 
when  a  man  is  starving,  is  hunger  an  unqualified  nat- 
ural impulse;  as  it  approaches  this  limit,  it  tends  to 
lose,  moreover,  its  psychological  distinctiveness  and  to 
become  a  raven  of  the  entire  organism. 

The  treatment  of  sex  by  psycho-analysts  is  most  in- 
structive, for  it  flagrantly  exhibits  both  the  conse- 
quences of  artificial  simplification  and  the  transforma- 
tion of  social  results  into  psychic  causes.  Writers, 
usually  male,  hold  forth  on  the  psychology  of  woman, 
as  if  they  were  dealing  with  a  Platonic  universal  entity, 
although  they  habitually  treat  men  as  individuals,  vary- 
ing with  structure  and  environment.  They  treat  phe- 
nomena which  are  peculiarly  symptoms  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  West  at  the  present  time  as  if  they  were 
the  necessary  effects  of  fixed  native  impulses  of  human 
nature.  Romantic  love  as  it  exists  today,  with  all  the 
varying  perturbations  it  occasions,  is  as  definitely  a 
sign  of  specific  historic  conditions  as  are  big  battle 
ships  with  turbines,  internal-combustion  engines,  and 
electrically  driven  machines.  It  would  be  as  sensible 
to  treat  the  latter  as  effects  of  a  single  psychic  cause 
as  to  attribute  the  phenomena  of  disturbance  and  con- 


154          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

flict  which  accompany  present  sexual  relations  as  mani- 
festations of  an  original  single  psychic  force  or  Libido. 
Upon  this  point  at  least  a  Marxian  simplification  is 
nearer  the  truth  than  that  of  Jung. 

Again  it  is  customary  to  suppose  that  there  is 
a  single  instinct  of  fear,  or  at  most  a  few  well-defined 
sub-species  of  it.  In  reality,  when  one  is  afraid  the 
whole  being  reacts,  and  this  entire  responding  organism 
is  never  twice  the  same.  In  fact,  also,  every  reaction 
takes  place  in  a  different  environment,  and  its  meaning 
is  never  twice  alike,  since  the  difference  in  environment 
makes  a  difference  in  consequences.  It  is  only  myth- 
ology which  sets  up  a  single,  identical  psychic  force 
which  "  causes  "  all  the  reactions  of  fear,  a  force  be- 
ginning and  ending  in  itself.  It  is  true  enough  that  in 
all  cases  we  are  able  to  identify  certain  more  or  less 
separable  characteristic  acts — muscular  contractions, 
withdrawals,  evasions,  concealments.  But  in  the  latter 
words  we  have  already  brought  in  an  environment.  Such 
terms  as  withdrawal  and  concealment  have  no  meaning 
except  as  attitudes  toward  objects.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  an  environment  in  general;  there  are  specific 
changing  objects  and  events.  Hence  the  kind  of  eva- 
sion or  running  away  or  shrinking  up  which  takes  place 
is  directly  correlated  with  specific  surrounding  condi- 
tions. There  is  no  one  fear  having  diverse  manifesta- 
tions ;  there  are  as  many  qualitatively  different  fears  as 
there  are  objects  responded  to  and  different  conse- 
quences sensed  and  observed. 

Fear  of  the  dark  is  different  from  fear  of  publicity, 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  155 

fear  of  the  dentist  from  fear  of  ghosts,  fear  of  con- 
spicuous success  from  fear  of  humiliation,  fear  of  a 
bat  from  fear  of  a  bear.  Cowardice,  embarrassment, 
caution  and  reverence  may  all  be  regarded  as  forms  of 
fear.  They  all  have  certain  physical  organic  acts  in 
common — those  of  organic  shrinkage,  gestures  of  hesi- 
tation and  retreat.  But  each  is  qualitatively  unique. 
Each  is  what  it  is  in  virtue  of  its  total  interactions  or 
correlations  with  other  acts  and  with  the  environing 
medium,  with  consequences.  High  explosives  and  the 
aeroplane  have  brought  into  being  something  new  in 
conduct.  There  is  no  error  in  calling  it  fear.  But 
there  is  error,  even  from  a  limited  clinical  standpoint, 
in  permitting  the  classifying  name  to  blot  from  view 
the  difference  between  fear  of  bombs  dropped  from  the 
sky  and  the  fears  which  previously  existed.  The  new 
fear  is  just  as  much  and  just  as  little  original  and 
native  as  a  child's  fear  of  a  stranger. 

For  any  activity  is  original  when  it  first  occurs.  As 
conditions  are  continually  changing,  new  and  primitive 
activities  are  continually  occurring.  The  traditional 
psychology  of  instincts  obscures  recognition  of  this 
fact.  It  sets  up  a  hard-and-fast  preordained  class 
under  which  specific  acts  are  subsumed,  so  that  their 
own  quality  and  originality  are  lost  from  view.  This  is 
why  the  novelist  and  dramatist  are  so  much  more  illumi- 
nating as  well  as  more  interesting  commentators  on 
conduct  than  the  schematizing  psychologist.  The 
artist  makes  perceptible  individual  responses  and  thus 
displays  a  new  phase  of  human  nature  evoked  in  new 


156          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

situations.  In  putting  the  case  visibly  and  dramati- 
cally he  reveals  vital  actualities.  The  scientific  system- 
atizer  treats  each  act  as  merely  another  sample  of  some 
old  principle,  or  as  a  mechanical  combination  of  ele- 
ments drawn  from  a  ready-made  inventory. 

When  we  recognize  the  diversity  of  native  activities 
and  the  varied  ways  in  which  they  are  modified  through 
interactions  with  one  another  in  response  to  different 
conditions,  we  are  able  to  understand  moral  phenomena 
otherwise  baffling.  In  the  career  of  any  impulse  activ- 
ity there  are  speaking  generally  three  possibilities.  It 
may  find  a  surging,  explosive  discharge — blind,  unin- 
telligent. It  may  be  sublimated — that  is,  become  a  fac- 
tor coordinated  intelligently  with  others  in  a  contin- 
uing course  of  action.  Thus  a  gust  of  anger  may,  be- 
cause of  its  dynamic  incorporation  into  disposition, 
be  converted  into  an  abiding  conviction  of  social  in- 
justice to  be  remedied,  and  furnish  the  dynamic  to 
carry  the  conviction  into  execution.  Or  an  excitation 
of  sexual  attraction  may  reappear  in  art  or  in  tranquil 
domestic  attachments  and  services.  Such  an  outcome 
represents  the  normal  or  desirable  functioning  of  im- 
pulse; in  which,  to  use  our  previous  language,  the  im- 
pulse operates  as  a  pivot,  or  reorganization  of  habit. 
Or  again  a  released  impulsive  activity  may  be  neither 
immediately  expressed  in  isolated  spasmodic  action,  nor 
indirectly  employed  in  an  enduring  interest.  It  may 
be  "  suppressed." 

Suppression  is  not  annihilation.  "  Psychic  "  energy 
is  no  more  capable  of  being  abolished  than  the  forms 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  157 

we  recognize  as  physical.  If  it  is  neither  exploded  nor 
converted,  it  is  turned  inwards,  to  lead  a  surreptitious, 
subterranean  life.  An  isolated  or  spasmodic  manifes- 
tation is  a  sign  of  immaturity,  crudity,  savagery;  a 
suppressed  activity  is  the  cause  of  all  kinds  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  pathology.  One  form  of  the  result- 
ing pathology  constitutes  "  reaction  "  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  historian  speaks  of  reactions.  A  conven- 
tionally familiar  instance  is  Stuart  license  after  Puri- 
tan restraint.  A  striking  modern  instance  is  the  orgy 
of  extravagance  following  upon  the  enforced  economies 
and  hardships  of  war,  the  moral  let-down  after  its 
highstrung  exalted  idealisms,  the  deliberate  careless- 
ness after  an  attention  too  intense  and  too  narrow. 
Outward  manifestation  of  many  normal  activities  had 
been  suppressed.  But  activities  were  not  suppressed. 
They  were  merely  dammed  up  awaiting  their  chance. 

Now  such  "  reactions  "  are  simultaneous  as  well  as 
successive.  Resort  to  artificial  stimulation,  to  alcoholic 
excess,  sexual  debauchery,  opium  and  narcotics  are  ex- 
amples. Impulses  and  interests  that  are  not  manifested 
in  the  regular  course  of  serviceable  activity  or  in  rec- 
reation demand  and  secure  a  special  manifestation. 
And  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  there  are  two  oppo- 
site forms.  Some  phenomena  are  characteristic  of  per- 
sons engaged  in  a  routine  monotonous  life  of  toil  at- 
tended with  fatigue  and  hardship.  And  others  are 
found  in  persons  who  are  intellectual  and  executive, 
men  whose  activities  are  anything  but  monotonous,  but 
are  narrowed  through  over-specialization.  Such  men 


158          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

think  too  much,  that  is,  too  much  along  a  particular 
line.  They  carry  too  heavy  responsibilities ;  that  is, 
their  offices  of  service  are  not  adequately  shared  with 
others.  They  seek  relief  by  escape  into  a  more  sociable 
and  easy-going1  world.  The  imperative  demand  for 
companionship  not  satisfied  in  ordinary  activity  is  met 
by  convivial  indulgence.  The  other  class  has  recourse 
to  excess  because  its  members  have  in  ordinary  occu- 
pations next  to  no  opportunity  for  imagination.  They 
make  a  foray  into  a  more  highly  colored  world  as  a 
substitute  for  a  normal  exercise  of  invention,  planning 
and  judgment.  Having  no  regular  responsibilities, 
they  seek  to  recover  an  illusion  of  potency  and  of  social 
recognition  by  an  artificial  exaltation  of  their  sub- 
merged and  humiliated  selves. 

Hence  the  love  of  pleasure  against  which  moralists 
issue  so  many  warnings.  Not  that  love  of  pleasures  is 
in  itself  in  any  way  demoralizing.  Love  of  the  pleas- 
ures of  cheerfulness,  of  companionship  is  one  of  the 
steadying  influences  in  conduct.  But  pleasure  has 
often  become  identified  with  special  thrills,  excitations, 
ticklings  of  sense,  stirrings  of  appetite  for  the  express 
purpose  of  enjoying  the  immediate  stimulation  irre- 
spective of  results.  Such  pleasures  are  signs  of  dissi- 
pation, dissoluteness,  in  the  literal  sense.  An  activity 
which  is  deprived  of  regular  stimulation  and  normal 
function  is  piqued  into  isolated  activity,  and  the  result 
is  division,  disassociation.  A  life  of  routine  and  of 
over-specialization  in  non-routine  lines  seek  occasions 
in  which  to  arouse  by  abnormal  means  a  feeling  of  sat- 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  159 

isf action  without  any  accompanying  objective  fulfil- 
ment. Hence,  as  moralists  have  pointed  out,  the  in- 
satiable character  of  such  appetites.  Activities  are  not 
really  satisfied,  that  is  fulfilled  in  objects.  They  con- 
tinue to  seek  for  gratification  in  more  intensified  stim- 
ulations. Orgies  of  pleasure-seeking,  varying  from 
saturnalia  to  mild  sprees,  result. 

It  does  not  follow  however  that  the  sole  alternative 
is  satisfaction  by  means  of  objectively  serviceable  ac- 
tion, that  is  by  action  which  effects  useful  changes  in 
the  environment.  There  is  an  optimistic  theory  of 
nature  according  to  which  wherever  there  is  natural 
law  there  is  also  natural  harmony.  Since  man  as 
well  as  the  world  is  included  in  the  scope  of  natural 
law,  It  is  inferred  that  there  is  natural  harmony  be- 
tween human  activities  and  surroundings,  a  harmony 
which  is  disturbed  only  when  man  indulges  in  "  arti- 
ficial "  departures  from  nature.  According  to  this  view, 
all  man  has  to  do  is  to  keep  his  occupations  in  balance 
with  the  energies  of  the  environment  and  he  will  be 
both  happy  and  efficient.  Rest,  recuperation,  relief  can 
be  found  in  a  proper  alternation  of  forms  of  useful 
work.  Do  the  things  which  surroundings  indicate  need 
doing,  and  success,  content,  restoration  of  powers  will 
take  care  of  themselves. 

This  benevolent  view  of  nature  falls  in  with  a  Puri- 
tanic devotion  to  work  for  its  own  sake  and  creates 
distrust  of  amusement,  play  and  recreation.  They  are 
felt  to  be  unnecessary,  and  worse,  dangerous  diversions 
from  the  path  of  useful  action  which  is  also  the  path  of 


160          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

duty.  Social  conditions  certainly  impart  to  occupa- 
tions as  they  are  now  carried  on  an  undue  element  of 
fatigue,  strain  and  drudgery.  Consequently  useful  oc- 
cupations which  are  so  ordered  socially  as  to  engage 
thought,  feed  imagination  and  equalize  the  impact  of 
stress  would  surely  introduce  a  tranquillity  and  recrea- 
tion which  are  now  lacking.  But  there  is  good  reason 
to  think  that  even  in  the  best  conditions  there  is  enough 
,  ^  maladjustment  between  the  necessities  of  the  environ- 
*/  ment  and  the  activities^'  natural  '7  to  man,  so  tjiat  con- 

V  straint  and  fatigue  would  always  accompany  activity, 
s  and  special  forms  of  action  be  needed — forms  that  are 
^r  significantly  called^ej-creation. 

*jv  Hence  the  immense  moral  importance  of  play  and  of 

fine,  or  make-believe,  art— of  activity,  that  is,  whicliis 
make-believe  from  thestandpoint  of  the  useful  arts  en- 
forced by  the  demands  of  the  environment.  When  mor- 
alists have  not  regarded  play  and  art  with  a  censorious 
eye,  they  often  have  thought  themselves  carrying  mat- 
ters to  the  pitch  of  generosity  by  conceding  that  they 
may  be  morally  indifferent  or  innocent.  But  in  truth 
they  are  moral  necessities.  They  are  required  to  take 
care  of  the  margin  that  exists  between  the  total  stock 
of  impulses  that  demand  outlet  and  the  amount  ex- 
pended in  regular  action.  They  keep  the  balance  which 
work  cannot  indefinitely  maintain.  They  are  required 
to  introduce  variety,  flexibility  and  sensitiveness  into 
disposition.  Yet  upon  the  whole  the  humanizing  capa- 
bilities of  sport  in  its  varied  forms,  drama,  fiction, 
music,  poetry,  newspapers  have  been  neglected.  They 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  161 

have  been  left  in  a  kind  of  a  moral  no-man's  territory. 
They  have  accomplished  part  of  their  function  but  they 
have  not  done  what  they  are  capable  of  doing.  In 
many  cases  they  have  operated  merely  as  reactions 
like  those  artificial  and  isolated  stimulations  already 
mentioned. 

The  suggestion  that  play  and  art  have  an  indispen- 
sable moral  function  which  should  receive  an  attention 
now  denied,  calls  out  an  immediate  and  vehement  pro- 
test. We  omit  reference  to  that  which  proceeds  from 
professional  moralists  to  whom  art,  fun  and  sport  are 
habitually  under  suspicion.  For  those  interested  in 
art,  professional  estheticians,  will  protest  even  more 
strenuously.  They  at  once  imagine  that  some  kind  of 
organized  supervision  if  not  censorship  of  play,  drama 
and  fiction  is  contemplated  which  will  convert  them  into 
means  of  moral  edification.  If  they  do  not  think  of 
Comstockian  interference  in  the  alleged  interest  of  pub- 
lic morals,  they  at  least  think  that  what  is  intended  is 
the  elimination  by  persons  of  a  Puritanic,  unartistic 
temperament  of  everything  not  found  sufficiently  ear- 
nest and  elevating,  a  fostering  of  art  not  for  its  own 
sake  but  as  a  means  of  doing  good  by  something  to 
somebody.  There  is  a  natural  fear  of  injecting  into 
art  a  spirit  of  earnest  uplift,  of  surrendering  art  to  the 
reformers. 

But  something  quite  other  than  this  is  meant.  Relief 
from  continuous  moral  activity — in  the  conventional 
sense  of  moral — is  itself  a  moral  necessity.  The  service 
of  art  and  play  is  to  engage  and  release  impulses  in 


162          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ways  quite  different  from  those  in  which  they  are  occu- 
pied and  employed  in  ordinary  activities.  Their  func- 
tion is  to  forestall  and  remedy  the  usual  exaggera- 
tions and  deficits  of  activity,  even  of  "  moral  "  activity 
and  to  prevent  a  stereotyping  of  attention.  To  say 
that  society  is  altogether  too  careless  about  the  moral 
worth  of  art  is  not  to  say  that  carelessness  about  useful 
occupations  is  not  a  necessity  for  art.  On  the  con- 
trary, whatever  deprives  play  and  art  of  their  own 
careless  rapture  thereby  deprives  them  of  their  moral 
function.  Art  then  becomes  poorer  as  art  as  a  matter 
of  course,  but  it  also  becomes  in  the  same  measure  less 
effectual  in  its  pertinent  moral  office.  It  tries  to  do 
what  other  things  can  do  better,  and  it  fails  to  do  what 
nothing  but  itself  can  do  for  human  nature,  softening 
rigidities,  relaxing  strains,  allaying  bitterness,  dispel- 
ling moroseness,  and  breaking  down  the  narrowness  con- 
sequent upon  specialized  tasks. 

Even  if  the  matter  be  put  in  this  negative  way,  the 
moral  value  of  art  cannot  be  depreciated.  But  there  is 
a  more  positive  function.  Play  and  art  add  fresh  and 
deeper  meanings  to  the  usual  activities  of  life.  In  con- 
trast with  a  Philistine  relegation  of  the  arts  to  a  trivial 
by-play  from  serious  concerns,  it  is  truer  to  say  that 
most  of  the  significance  now  found  in  serious  occupa- 
tions originated  in  activities  not  immediately  useful, 
and  gradually  found  its  way  from  them  into  objectively 
serviceable  employments.  For  their  spontaneity  and 
liberation  from  external  necessities  permits  to  them  an 
enhancement  and  vitality  of  meaning  not  possible  in 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  163 

preoccupation  with  immediate  needs.  Later  this  mean- 
ing is  transferred  to  useful  activities  and  becomes  a 
part  of  their  ordinary  working.  In  saying  then  that 
art  and  play  have  a  moral  office  not  adequately  taken 
advantage  of  it  is  asserted  that  they  are  responsible 
to  life,  to  the  enriching  and  freeing  of  its  meanings, 
not  that  they  are  responsible  to  a  moral  code,  com- 
mandment or  special  task. 

To  a  coarse  view — and  professed  moral  refinement  is 
often  given  to  taking  coarse  views — there  is  something 
vulgar  not  only  in  recourse  to  abnormal  artificial  exi- 
tents  and  stimulations  but  also  in  interest  in  useless 
games  and  arts.  Negatively  the  two  things  have  fea- 
tures which  are  alike.  They  both  spring  from  failure 
of  regular  occupations  to  engage  the  full  scope  of  im- 
pulses and  instincts  in  an  elastically  balanced  way. 
They  both  evince  a  surplusage  of  imagination  over 
fact;  a  demand  in  imaginative  activity  for  an  outlet 
which  is  denied  in  overt  activity.  They  both  aim  at 
reducing  the  domination  of  the  prosaic;  both  are  pro- 
tests against  the  lowering  of  meanings  attendant  upon 
ordinary  vocations.  As  a  consequence  no  rule  can  be 
laid  down  for  discriminating  by  direct  inspection  be- 
tween unwholesome  stimulations  and  invaluable  excur- 
sions into  appreciative  enhancements  of  life.  Their 
difference  lies  in  the  way  they  work,  the  careers  to 
which  they  commit  us. 

Art  releases  energy  and  focuses  and  tranquilizes  it. 
It  releases  energy  in  constructive  forms.  Castles  in 
the  air  like  art  have  their  source  in  a  turning  of  im- 


164         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

pulse  away  from  useful  production.  Both  are  due  to 
the  failure  in  some  part  of  man's  constitution  to  secure 
fulfilment  in  ordinary  ways.  But  in  one  case  the  con- 
version of  direct  energy  into  imagination  is  the  starting 
point  of  an  activity  which  shapes  material ;  fancy  is  fed 
upon  a  stuff  of  life  which  assumes  under  its  influence  a 
rejuvenated,  composed  and  enhanced  form.  In  the  other 
case,  fancy  remains  an  end  in  itself.  It  becomes  an  in- 
dulging in  fantasies  which  bring  about  withdrawal  from 
all  realities,  while  wishes  impotent  in  action  build  a 
world  which  yields  temporary  excitement.  Any  imagi- 
nation is  a  sign  that  impulse  is  impeded  and  is  groping 
for  utterance.  Sometimes  the  outcome  is  a  refreshed 
useful  habit ;  sometimes  it  is  an  articulation  in  creative 
art;  and  sometimes  it  is  a  futile  romancing  which  for 
some  natures  does  what  self-pity  does  for  others.  The 
amount  of  potential  energy  of  reconstruction  that  is 
dissipated  in  unexpressed  fantasy  supplies  us  with  a 
fair  measure  of  the  extent  to  which  the  current  organi- 
zation of  occupation  balks  and  twists  impulse,  and,  by 
the  same  sign,  with  a  measure  of  the  function  of  art 
which  is  not  yet  utilized. 

The  development  of  mental  pathologies  to  the  point 
where  they  need  clinical  attention  has  of  late  enforced 
a  widespread  consciousness  of  some  of  the  evils  of  sup- 
pression of  impulse.  The  studies  of  psychiatrists  have 
made  clear  that  impulses  driven  into  pockets  distil 
poison  and  produce  festering  sores.  An  organization 
of  impulse  into  a  working  habit  forms  an  interest.  A 
surreptitious  furtive  organization  which  does  not  artic- 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  165 

ulate  in  avowed  expression  forms  a  "  complex."  Cur- 
rent clinical  psychology  has  undoubtedly  overworked 
the  influence  of  sexual  impulse  in  this  connection,  refus- 
ing at  the  hands  of  some  writers  to  recognize  the  opera- 
tion of  any  other  modes  of  disturbance.  There  are 
explanations  of  this  onesidedness.  The  intensity  of  the 
sexual  instinct  and  its  organic  ramifications  produce 
many  of  the  cases  that  are  so  noticeable  as*  to  demand 
the  attention  of  physicians.  And  social  taboos  and  the 
tradition  of  secrecy  have  put  this  impulse  under  greater 
strain  than  has  been  imposed  upon  others.  If  a  society 
existed  in  which  the  existence  of  impulse  toward  food 
were  socially  disavowed  until  it  was  compelled  to  live 
an  illicit,  covert  life,  alienists  would  have  plenty  of 
cases  of  mental  and  moral  disturbance  to  relate  in  con- 
nection with  hunger. 

The  significant  thing  is  that  the  pathology  arising 
from  the  sex  instinct  affords  a  striking  case  of  a  uni- 
versal principle.  Every  impulse  is,  as  far  as  it  goes, 
force,  urgency.  It  must  either  be  used  in  some  func- 
tion, direct  or  sublimated,  or  be  driven  into  a  con- 
cealed, hidden  activity.  It  has  long  been  asserted  on 
empirical  grounds  that  expression  and  enslavement  re- 
sult in  corruption  and  perversion.  We  have  at  last 
discovered  the  reason  for  this  fact.  The  wholesome 
and  saving  force  of  intellectual  freedom,  open  confron- 
tation, publicity,  now  has  the  stamp  of  scientific  sanc- 
tion. The  evil  of  checking  impulses  is  not  that  they 
are  checked.  Without  inhibition  there  is  no  insti- 
gation of  imagination,  no  redirection  into  more  dis- 


166         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

criminated  and  comprehensive  activities.  The  evil  re- 
sides in  a  refusal  of  direct  attention  which  forces  the 
impulse  into  disguise  and  concealment,  until  it  enacts 
its  own  unavowed  uneasy  private  life  subject  to  no 
inspection  and  no  control. 

A  rebellious  disposition  is  also  a  form  of  romanti- 
cism. At  least  rebels  set  out  as  romantics,  or,  in  pop- 
ular parlance,  as  idealists.  There  is  no  bitterness  like 
that  of  conscious  impotency,  the  sense  of  suffocatingly 
complete  suppression.  The  world  is  hopeless  to  one 
without  hope.  The  rage  of  total  despair  is  a  vain  ef- 
fort at  blind  destructiveness.  Partial  suppression  in- 
duces in  some  natures  a  picture  of  complete  freedom, 
while  it  arouses  a  destructive  protest  against  existing 
institutions  as  enemies  that  stand  in  the  way  of  free- 
dom. Rebellion  has  at  least  one  advantage  over  re- 
course to  artificial  stimulation  and  to  subconscious 
nursings  of  festering  sore  spots.  It  engages  in  action 
and  thereby  comes  in  contact  with  realities.  It  con- 
tains the  possibility  of  learning  something.  Yet  learn- 
ing by  this  method  is  immensely  expensive.  The  costs 
are  incalculable.  As  Napoleon  said,  every  revolution 
moves  in  a  vicious  circle.  It  begins  and  ends  in  excess. 

To  view  institutions  as  enemies  of  freedom,  and  all 
conventions  as  slaveries,  is  to  deny  the  only  means  by 
which  positive  freedom  in  action  can  be  secured.  A 
general  liberation  of  impulses  may  set  things  going 
when  they  have  been  stagnant,  but  if  the  released  forces 
are  on  their  way  to  anything  they  do  not  know  the 
way  nor  where  they  are  going.  Indeed,  they  are  bound 


NO  SEPARATE  INSTINCTS  167 

to  be  mutually  contradictory  and  hence  destructive — 
destructive  not  only  of  the  habits  they  wish  to  destroy 
but  of  themselves,  of  their  own  efficacy.  Convention 
and  custom  are  necessary  to  carrying  forward  impulse 
to  any  happy  conclusion.  A  romantic  return  to  nature 
and  a  freedom  sought  within  the  individual  without 
regard  to  the  existing  environment  finds  its  terminus 
in  chaos.  Every  belief  to  the  contrary  combines  pes- 
simism regarding  the  actual  with  an  even  more  opti- 
mistic faith  in  some  natural  harmony  or  other — a  faith 
which  is  a  survival  of  some  of  the  traditional  meta- 
physics and  theologies  which  professedly  are  to  be 
swept  away.  Not  convention  but  stupid  and  rigid  con- 
vention is  the  foe.  And,  as  we  have  noted,  a  convention 
can  be  reorganized  and  made  mobile  only  by  using  some 
other  custom  for  giving  leverage  to  an  impulse. 

Yet  it  is  too  easy  to  utter  commonplaces  about  the 
superiority  of  constructive  action  to  destructive.  At 
all  events  the  professed  conservative  and  classicist  of 
tradition  seeks  too  cheap  a  victory  over  the  rebel.  For 
the  rebel  is  not  self-generated.  In  the  beginning  no 
one  is  a  revolutionist  simply  for  the  fun  of  it,  however 
it  may  be  after  the  furor  of  destructive  power  geta 
under  way.  The  rebel  is  the  product  of  extreme  fixa- 
tion and  unintelligent  immobilities.  Life  is  perpetu- 
ated only  by  renewal.  If  conditions  do  not  permit  re- 
newal to  take  place  continuously  it  will  take  place  ex- 
plosively. The  cost  of  revolutions  must  be  charged  up 
to  those  who  have  taken  for  their  aim  arrest  of  custom 
instead  of  its  readjustment.  The  only  ones  who  have 


168          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

the  right  to  criticize  "  radicals  " — adopting  for  the 
moment  that  perversion  of  language  which  identifies  the 
radical  with  the  destructive  rebel — are  those  who  put 
as  much  effort  into  reconstruction  as  the  rebels  are  put- 
ting into  destruction.  The  primary  accusation  against 
the  revolutionary  must  be  directed  against  those  who 
having  power  refuse  to  use  it  for  ameliorations.  They 
are  the  ones  who  accumulate  the  wrath  that  sweeps 
away  customs  and  institutions  in  an  undiscriminating 
avalanche.  Too  often  the  man  who  should  be  criti- 
cizing institutions  expends  his  energy  in  criticizing 
those  who  would  re-form  them.  What  he  really  objects 
to  is  any  disturbance  of  his  own  vested  securities,  com- 
forts and  privileged  powers. 


VII 


We  return  to  the  original  proposition.  The  position 
of  impulse  in  conduct  is  intermediary.  Morality  is  an 
endeavor  to  find  for  the  manifestation  of  impulse  in 
special  situations  an  office  of  refreshment  and  renewal. 
The  endeavor  is  not  easy  of  accomplishment.  It  is 
easier  to  surrender  the  main  and  public  channels  of 
action  and  belief  to  the  sluggishness  of  custom,  and 
idealize  tradition  by  emotional  attachment  to  its  ease, 
comforts  and  privileges  instead  of  idealizing  it  in  prac- 
tice by  making  it  more  equably  balanced  with  pres- 
ent needs.  Again,  impulses  not  used  for  the  work  of 
rejuvenation  and  vital  recovery  are  sidetracked  to  find 
their  own  lawless  barbarities  or  their  own  sentimental 
refinements.  Or  they  are  perverted  to  pathological 
careers — some  of  which  have  been  mentioned. 

In  the  course  of  time  custom  becomes  intolerable  be- 
cause of  what  it  suppresses  and  some  accident  of  war 
or  inner  catastrophe  releases  impulses  for  unrestrained 
expression.  At  such  times  we  have  philosophies  which 
identify  progress  with  motion,  blind  spontaneity  with 
freedom,  and  which  under  the  name  of  the  sacredness  of 
individuality  or  a  return  to  the  norms  of  nature  make 
impulse  a  law  unto  itself.  The  oscillation  between  im- 
pulse arrested  and  frozen  in  rigid  custom  and  impulse 
isolated  and  undirected  is  seen  most  conspicuously  when 

169 


170          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

epochs  of  conservatism  and  revolutionary  ardor  alter- 
nate. But  the  same  phenomenon  is  repeated  on  a 
smaller  scale  in  individuals.  And  in  society  the  two 
tendencies  and  philosophies  exist  simultaneously;  they 
waste  in  controversial  strife  the  energy  that  is  needed 
for  specific  criticism  and  specific  reconstruction. 

The  release  of  some  portion  of  the  stock  of  impulses 
is  an  opportunity,  not  an  end.  In  its  origin  it  is  the 
product  of  chance ;  but  it  affords  imagination  and  in- 
vention their  chance.  The  moral  correlate  of  liberated 
impulse  is  not  immediate  activity,  but  reflection  upon 
the  way  in  which  to  use  impulse  to  renew  disposition 
and  reorganize  habit.  Escape  from  the  clutch  of  cus- 
tom gives  an  opportunity  to  do  old  things  in  new  ways, 
and  thus  to  construct  new  ends  and  means.  Breach 
in  the  crust  of  the  cake  of  custom  releases  impulses; 
but  it  is  the  work  of  intelligence  to  find  the  ways  of 
using  them.  There  is  an  alternative  between  anchoring 
a  boat  in  the  harbor  till  it  becomes  a  rotting  hulk  and 
letting  it  loose  to  be  the  sport  of  every  contrary  gust. 
To  discover  and  define  this  alternative  is  the  business 
of  mind,  of  observant,  remembering,  contriving  dis- 
position. 

Habit  as  a  vital  art  depends  upon  the  animation  of 
habit  by  impulse;  only  this  inspiriting  stands  between 
habit  and  stagnation.  But  art,  little  as  well  as  great, 
anonymous  as  well  as  that  distinguished  by  titles  of 
dignity,  cannot  be  improvised.  It  is  impossible  without 
spontaneity,  but  it  is  not  spontaneity.  Impulse  is 
needed  to  arouse  thought,  incite  reflection  and  enliven 


171 

belief.  But  only  thought  notes  obstructions,  invents 
tools,  conceives  aims,  directs  technique,  and  thus  con- 
verts impulse  into  an  art  which  lives  in  objects. 
Thought  is  born  as  the  twin  of  impulse  in  every  mo- 
ment of  impeded  habit.  But  unless  it  is  nurtured,  it 
speedily  dies,  and  habit  and  instinct  continue  their 
civil  warfare.  There  is  instinctive  wisdom  in  the  ten- 
dency of  the  young  to  ignore  the  limitations  of  the  en- 
vironment. Only  thus  can  they  discover  their  own 
power  and  learn  the  differences  in  different  kinds  of 
environing  limitations.  But  this  discovery  when  once 
made  marks  the  birth  of  intelligence ;  and  with  its  birth 
comes  the  responsibility  of  the  mature  to  observe,  to 
recall,  to  forecast.  Every  moral  life  has  its  radical- 
ism; but  this  radical  factor  does  not  find  its  full  ex- 
pression in  direct  action  but  in  the  courage  of  intelli- 
gence to  go  deeper  than  either  tradition  or  immediate 
impulse  goes.  To  the  study  of  intelligence  in  action  we 
now  turn  our  attention. 


PART  THREE 

THE    PLACE    OF    INTELLIGENCE    IN    CONDUCT 


IN  discussing  habit  and  impulse  we  have  repeatedly 
met  topics  where  reference  to  the  work  of  thought  was 
imperative.  Explicit  consideration  of  the  place  and 
office  of  intelligence  in  conduct  can  hardly  begin  other- 
wise than  by  gathering  together  these  incidental  refer- 
ences and  reaffirming  their  significance.  The  stimula- 
tion of  reflective  imagination  by  impulse,  its  depend- 
ence upon  established  habits,  and  its  effect  in  trans- 
forming habit  and  regulating  impulse  forms,  accord- 
ingly, our  first  theme. 

Habits  are  conditions  of  intellectual  efficiency.  They 
operate  in  two  ways  upon  intellect.  Obviously,  they 
restrict  its  reach,  they  fix  its  boundaries.  They  are 
blinders  that  confine  the  eyes  of  mind  to  the  road  ahead. 
They  prevent  thought  from  straying  away  from  its  im- 
minent occupation  to  a  landscape  more  varied  and 
picturesque  but  irrelevant  to  practice.  Outside  the 
scope  of  habits,  thought  works  gropingly,  fumbling  in 
confused  uncertainty;  and  yet  habit  made  complete  in 
routine  shuts  in  thought  so  effectually  that  it  is  no 
longer  needed  or  possible.  The  routineer's  road  is  a 

172 


HABIT  AND  INTELLIGENCE  173 

ditch  out  of  which  he  cannot  get,  whose  sides  enclose 
him,  directing  his  course  so  thoroughly  that  he  no 
longer  thinks  of  his  path  or  his  destination.  All  habit- 
forming  involves  the  beginning  of  an  intellectual  spec- 
cialization  which  if  unchecked  ends  in  thoughtless 
action. 

Significantly  enough  this  fullblown  result  is  called 
absentmindedness.  Stimulus  and  response  are  mechan- 
ically linked  together  in  an  unbroken  chain.  Each  suc- 
cessive act  facilely  evoked  by  its  predecessor  pushes  us 
automatically  into  the  next  act  of  a  predetermined  se- 
ries. Only  a  signal  flag  of  distress  recalls  consciousness 
to  the  task  of  carrying  on.  Fortunately  nature  which 
beckons  us  to  this  path  of  least  resistance  also  puts 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  our  complete  acceptance  of  its 
invitation.  Success  in  achieving  a  ruthless  and  dull 
efficiency  of  action  is  thwarted  by  untoward  circum- 
stance. The  most  skilful  aptitude  bumps  at  times  into 
the  unexpected,  and  so  gets  into  trouble  from  which 
only  observation  and  invention  extricate  it.  Efficiency 
in  following  a  beaten  path  has  then  to  be  converted 
into  breaking  a  new  road  through  strange  lands. 

Nevertheless  what  in  effect  is  love  of  ease  has  mas- 
queraded morally  as  love  of  perfection.  A  goal  of  fin- 
ished accomplishment  has  been  set  up  which  if  it  were 
attained  would  mean  only  mindless  action.  It  has  been 
called  complete  and  free  activity  when  in  truth  it  is 
only  a  treadmill  activity  or  marching  in  one  place.  The 
practical  impossibility  of  reaching,  in  an  all  around 
way  and  all  at  once  such  a  "  perfection  "  has  been  rec- 


174          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ognized.  But  such  a  goal  has  nevertheless  been  con- 
ceived as  the  ideal,  and  progress  has  been  defined  as 
approximation  to  it.  Under  diverse  intellectual  skies 
the  ideal  has  assumed  diverse  forms  and  colors.  But 
all  of  them  have  involved  the  conception  of  a  completed 
activity,  a  static  perfection.  Desire  and  need  have  been 
treated  as  signs  of  deficiency,  and  endeavor  as  proof 
not  of  power  but  of  incompletion. 

In  Aristotle  this  conception  of  an  end  which  ex- 
hausts all  realization  and  excludes  all  potentiality  ap- 
pears as  a  definition  of  the  highest  excellence.  It  of 
necessity  excludes  all  want  and  struggle  and  all  de- 
pendencies. It  is  neither  practical  nor  social.  Noth- 
ing is  left  but  a  self-revolving,  self-sufficing  thought 
engaged  in  contemplating  its  own  sufficiency.  Some 
forms  of  Oriental  morals  have  united  this  logic  with  a 
profounder  psychology,  and  have  seen  that  the  final 
terminus  on  this  road  is  Nirvana,  an  obliteration  of 
all  thought  and  desire.  In  medieval  science,  the  ideal 
reappeared  as  a  definition  of  heavenly  bliss  accessible 
only  to  a  redeemed  immortal  soul.  Herbert  Spencer 
is  far  enough  away  from  Aristotle,  medieval  Christian- 
ity and  Buddhism;  but  the  idea  re-emerges  in  his  con- 
ception of  a  goal  of  evolution  in  which  adaptation  of 
organism  to  environment  is  complete  and  final.  In 
popular  thought,  the  conception  lives  in  the  vague 
thought  of  a  remote  state  of  attainment  in  which  we 
shall  be  beyond  "  temptation,"  and  in  which  virtue 
by  its  own  inertia  will  persist  as  a  triumphant  consum- 
mation. Even  Kant  who  begins  with  a  complete  scorn 


HABIT  AND  INTELLIGENCE  175 

for  happiness  ends  with  an  "  ideal "  of  the  eternal  and 
undisturbed  union  of  virtue  and  joy,  though  in  his 
case  nothing  but  a  symbolic  approximation  is  admitted 
to  be  feasible. 

The  fallacy  in  these  versions  of  the  same  idea  is 
perhaps  the  most  pervasive  of  all  fallacies  in  philos- 
ophy. So  common  is  it  that  one  questions  whether  it 
might  not  be  called  the  philosophical  fallacy.  It  con- 
sists in  the  supposition  that  whatever  is  found  true 
under  certain  conditions  may  forthwith  be  asserted  uni- 
versally or  without  limits  and  conditions.  Because  a 
thirsty  man  gets  satisfaction  in  drinking  water,  bliss 
consists  in  being  drowned.  Because  the  success  of  any 
particular  struggle  is  measured  by  reaching  a  point  of 
frictionless  action,  therefore  there  is  such  a  thing  as  an 
all-inclusive  end  of  effortless  smooth  activity  endlessly 
maintained.  It  is  forgotten  that  success  is  success  of 
a  specific  effort,  and  satisfaction  the  fulfilment  of  a 
specific  demand,  so  that  success  and  satisfaction  be- 
come meaningless  when  severed  from  the  wants  and 
struggles  whose  consummations  they  are,  or  when 
taken  universally.  The  philosophy  of  Nirvana  comes 
the  closest  to  admission  of  this  fact,  but  even  it  holds 
Nirvana  to  be  desirable. 

Habit  is  however  more  than  a  restriction  of  thought. 
Habits  become  negative  limits  because  they  are  first 
positive  agencies.  The  more  numerous  our  habits  the 
wider  the  field  of  possible  observation  and  foretelling. 
The  more  flexible  they  are,  the  more  refined  is  percep- 
tion in  its  discrimination  and  the  more  delicate  the  pres- 


176          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

entation  evoked  by  imagination.  The  sailor  is  intel- 
lectually at  home  on  the  sea,  the  hunter  in  the  forest, 
the  painter  in  his  studio,  the  man  of  science  in  his  labo- 
ratory. These  commonplaces  are  universally  recog- 
nized in  the  concrete ;  but  their  significance  is  obscured 
and  their  truth  denied  in  the  current  general  theory 
of  mind.  For  they  mean  nothing  more  or  less  than 
that  habits  formed  in  process  of  exercising  biological 
aptitudes  are  the  sole  agents  of  observation,  recollec- 
tion, foresight  and  judgment:  a  mind  or  consciousness 
or  soul  in  general  which  performs  these  operations  is 
a  myth. 

The  doctrine  of  a  single,  simple  and  indissoluble  soul 
was  the  cause  and  the  effect  of  failure  to  recognize  that 
concrete  habits  are  the  means  of  knowledge  and 
thought.  Many  who  think  themselves  scientifically 
emancipated  and  who  freely  advertise  the  soul  for  a 
superstition,  perpetuate  a  false  notion  of  what  knows, 
that  is,  of  a  separate  knower.  Nowadays  they  usually 
fix  upon  consciousness  in  general,  as  a  stream  or  process 
or  entity ;  or  else,  more  specifically  upon  sensations  and 
images  as  the  tools  of  intellect.  Or  sometimes  they 
think  they  have  scaled  the  last  heights  of  realism  by 
adverting  grandiosely  to  a  formal  knower  in  general 
who  serves  as  one  term  in  the  knowing  relation ; 
by  dismissing  psychology  as  irrelevant  to  knowledge 
and  logic,  they  think  to  conceal  the  psychological  mon- 
ster they  have  conjured  up. 

Now  it  is  dogmatically  stated  that  no  such  concep- 
tions of  the  seat,  agent  or  vehicle  will  go  psychologic- 


HABIT  AND  INTELLIGENCE  177 

ally  at  the  present  time.  Concrete  habits  do  all  the 
perceiving,  recognizing,  imagining,  recalling,  judging, 
conceiving  and  reasoning  that  is  done.  "  Conscious- 
ness," whether  as  a  stream  or  as  special  sensations  and 
images,  expresses  functions  of  habits,  phenomena  of 
their  formation,  operation,  their  interruption  and  reor- 
ganization. 

Yet  habit  does  not,  of  itself,  know,  for  it  does  not 
of  itself  stop  to  think,  observe  or  remember.  Neither 
does  impulse  of  itself  engage  in  reflection  or  contem- 
plation. It  just  lets  go.  Habits  by  themselves  are  too 
organized,  too  insistent  and  determinate  to  need  to 
indulge  in  inquiry  or  imagination.  And  impulses  are 
too  chaotic,  tumultuous  and  confused  to  be  able  to 
know  even  if  they  wanted  to.  Habit  as  such  is  too 
definitely  adapted  to  an  environment  to  survey  or  an- 
alyze it,  and  impulse  is  too  indeterminately  related  to 
the  environment  to  be  capable  of  reporting  anything 
about  it.  Habit  incorporates,  enacts  or  overrides  ob- 
jects, but  it  doesn't  know  them.  Impulse  scatters  and 
obliterates  them  with  its  restless  stir.  A  certain  deli- 
cate combination  of  habit  and  impulse  is  requisite  for 
observation,  memory  and  judgment.  Knowledge  which 
is  not  projected  against  the  black  unknown  lives  in  the 
muscles,  not  in  consciousness. 

We  may,  indeed,  be  said  to  know  how  by  means  of  our 
habits.  And  a  sensible  intimation  of  the  practical  func- 
tion of  knowledge  has  led  men  to  identify  all  acquired 
practical  skill,  or  even  the  instinct  of  animals,  with 
knowledge.  We  walk  and  read  aloud,  we  get  off  and 


178          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

on  street  cars,  we  dress  and  undress,  and  do  a  thousand 
useful  acts  without  thinking  of  them.  We  know  some- 
thing, namely,  how  to  do  them.  Bergson's  philosophy 
of  intuition  is  hardly  more  than  an  elaborately  docu- 
mented commentary  on  the  popular  conception  that  by 
instinct  a  bird  knows  how  to  build  a  nest  and  a  spider 
to  weave  a  web.  But  after  all,  this  practical  work 
done  by  habit  and  instinct  in  securing  prompt  and  exact 
adjustment  to  the  environment  is  not  knowledge,  except 
by  courtesy.  Or,  if  we  choose  to  call  it  knowledge — 
and  no  one  has  the  right  to  issue  an  ukase  to  the  con- 
trary— then  other  things  also  called  knowledge,  knowl- 
edge of  and  about  things,  knowledge  that  things  are 
thus  and  so,  knowledge  that  involves  reflection  and  con- 
scious appreciation,  remains  of  a  different  sort,  unac- 
counted for  and  undescribed. 

For  it  is  a  commonplace  that  the  more  suavely  ef- 
ficient a  habit  the  more  unconsciously  it  operates.  Only 
a  hitch  in  its  workings  occasions  emotion  and  provokes 
thought.  Carlyle  and  Rousseau,  hostile  in  tempera- 
ment and  outlook,  yet  agree  in  looking  at  conscious- 
ness as  a  kind  of  disease,  since  we  have  no  consciousness 
of  bodily  or  mental  organs  as  long  as  they  work  at  ease 
in  perfect  health.  The  idea  of  disease  is,  however,  aside 
from  the  point,  unless  we  are  pessimistic  enough  to 
regard  every  slip  in  total  adjustment  of  a  person  to  its 
surroundings  as  something  abnormal — a  point  of  view 
which  once  more  would  identify  well-being  with  perfect 
automatism.  The  truth  is  that  in  every  waking  mo- 
ment, the  complete  balance  of  the  organism  and  its 


HABIT  AND  INTELLIGENCE  179 

environment  is  constantly  interfered  with  and  as  con- 
stantly restored.  Hence  the  "  stream  of  conscious- 
ness "  in  general,  and  in  particular  that  phase  of  it  cele- 
brated by  William  James  as  alternation  of  flights  and 
perchings.  Life  is  interruptions  and  recoveries.  Con- 
tinuous interruption  is  not  possible  in  the  activities 
of  an  individual.  Absence  of  perfect  equilibrium  is  not 
equivalent  to  a  complete  crushing  of  organized  activ- 
ity. When  the  disturbance  amounts  to  such  a  pitch 
as  that,  the  self  goes  to  pieces.  It  is  like  shell-shock. 
Normally,  the  environment  remains  sufficiently  in  har- 
mony with  the  body  of  organized  activities  to  sustain 
most  of  them  in  active  function.  But  a  novel  factor 
in  the  surroundings  releases  some  impulse  which  tends 
to  initiate  a  different  and  incompatible  activity,  to 
bring  about  a  redistribution  of  the  elements  of  organ- 
ized activity  between  those  have  been  respectively 
central  and  subsidiary.  Thus  the  hand  guided  by  the 
eye  moves  toward  a  surface.  Visual  quality  is  the  dom- 
inant element.  The  hand  comes  in  contact  with  an 
object.  The  eye  does  not  cease  to  operate  but  some 
unexpected  quality  of  touch,  a  voluptuous  smoothness 
or  annoying  heat,  compels  a  readjustment  in  which  the 
touching,  handling  activity  strives  to  dominate  the  ac- 
tion. Now  at  these  moments  of  a  shifting  in  activity 
conscious  feeling  and  thought  arise  and  are  accentu- 
ated. The  disturbed  adjustment  of  organism  and  en- 
vironment is  reflected  in  a  temporary  strife  which  con- 
cludes in  a  coming  to  terms  of  the  old  habit  and  the  new 
impulse. 


180          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

In  this  period  of  redistribution  impulse  determines 
the  direction  of  movement.  It  furnishes  the  focus  about 
which  reorganization  swirls.  Our  attention  in  short  is 
always  directed  forward  to  bring  to  notice  something 
which  is  imminent  but  which  as  yet  escapes  us.  Impulse 
defines  the  peering,  the  search,  the  inquiry.  It  is,  in 
logical  language,  the  movement  into  the  unknown,  not 
into  the  immense  inane  of  the  unknown  at  large,  but  into 
that  special  unknown  which  when  it  is  hit  upon  restores 
an  ordered,  unified  action.  During  this  search,  old 
habit  supplies  content,  filling,  definite,  recognizable, 
subject-matter.  It  begins  as  vague  presentiment  of 
what  we  are  going  towards.  As  organized  habits  are 
definitely  deployed  and  focused,  the  confused  situation 
takes  on  form,  it  is  "  cleared  up  " — the  essential  func- 
tion of  intelligence.  Processes  become  objects.  With- 
out habit  there  is  only  irritation  and  confused  hesita- 
tion. With  habit  alone  there  is  a  machine-like  repeti- 
tion, a  duplicating  recurrence  of  old  acts.  With  con- 
flict of  habits  and  release  of  impulse  there  is  conscious 
search. 


n 


We  are  going  far  afield  from  any  direct  moral  issue. 
But  the  problem  of  the  place  of  knowledge  and  judg- 
ment in  conduct  depends  upon  getting  the  fundamental 
psychology  of  thought  straightened  out.  So  the  ex- 
cursion must  be  continued.  We  compare  life  to  a  trav- 
eler faring  forth.  We  may  consider  him  first  at  a 
moment  where  his  activity  is  confident,  straightforward, 
organized.  He  marches  on  giving  no  direct  attention  to 
his  path,  nor  thinking  of  his  destination.  Abruptly  he 
is  pulled  up,  arrested.  Something  is  going  wrong  in 
his  activity.  From  the  standpoint  of  an  onlooker,  he 
has  met  an  obstacle  which  must  be  overcome  before  his 
behavior  can  be  unified  into  a  successful  ongoing.  From 
his  own  standpoint,  there  is  shock,  confusion,  perturba- 
tion, uncertainty.  For  the  moment  he  doesn't  know 
what  hit  him,  as  we  say,  nor  where  he  is  going.  But 
a  new  impulse  is  stirred  which  becomes  the  starting 
point  of  an  investigation,  a  looking  into  things,  a  trying 
to  see  them,  to  find  out  what  is  going  on.  Habits  which 
were  interfered  with  begin  to  get  a  new  direction  as  they 
cluster  about  the  impulse  to  look  and  see.  The  blocked 
habits  of  locomotion  give  him  a  sense  of  where  he  was 
going,  of  what  he  had  set  out  to  do,  and  of  the  ground 
already  traversed.  As  he  looks,  he  sees  definite  things 
which  are  not  just  things  at  large  but  which  are  related 

181 


182          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

to  his  course  of  action.  The  momentum  of  the  activity 
entered  upon  persists  as  a  sense  of  direction,  of  aim; 
it  is  an  anticipatory  project.  In  short,  he  recollects, 
observes  and  plans. 

The  trinity  of  these  forecasts,  perceptions  and  re- 
membrances form  a  subject-matter  of  discriminated 
and  identified  objects.  These  objects  represent  habits 
turned  inside  out.  They  exhibit  both  the  onward  ten- 
dency of  habit  and  the  objective  conditions  which  have 
been  incorporated  within  it.  Sensations  in  immediate 
consciousness  are  elements  of  action  dislocated  through 
the  shock  of  interruption.  They  never,  however,  com- 
pletely monopolize  the  scene;  for  there  is  a  body  of 
residual  undisturbed  habits  which  is  reflected  in  remem- 
bered and  perceived  objects  having  a  meaning.  Thus 
out  of  shock  and  puzzlement  there  gradually  emerges  a 
figured  framework  of  objects,  past,  present,  future. 
These  shade  off  variously  into  a  vast  penumbra  of 
vague,  unfigured  things,  a  setting  which  is  taken  for 
granted  and  not  at  all  explicitly  presented.  The  com- 
plexity of  the  figured  scene  in  its  scope  and  refinement 
of  contents  depends  wholly  upon  prior  habits  and  theii 
organization.  The  reason  a  baby  can  know  little  and 
an  experienced  adult  know  much  when  confronting  the 
same  things  is  not  because  the  latter  has  a  "  mind  " 
which  the  former  has  not,  but  because  one  has  already 
formed  habits  which  the  other  has  still  to  acquire.  The 
scientific  man  and  the  philosopher  like  the  carpenter, 
the  physician  and  politician  know  with  their  habits  not 
with  their  "  consciousness."  The  latter  is  eventual,  noh 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THINKING         183 

a  source.  Its  occurrence  marks  a  peculiarly  delicate 
connection  between  highly  organized  habits  and  un- 
organized impulses.  Its  contents  or  objects,  observed, 
recollected,  projected  and  generalized  into  principles, 
represent  the  incorporated  material  of  habits  coming 
to  the  surface,  because  habits  are  disintegrating  at  the 
touch  of  conflicting  impulses.  But  they  also  gather 
themselves  together  to  comprehend  impulse  and  make 
it  effective. 

This  account  is  more  or  less  strange  as  psychology 
but  certain  aspects  of  it  are  commonplaces  in  a  static 
logical  formulation.  It  is,  for  example,  almost  a  truism 
that  knowledge  is  both  synthetic  and  analytic ;  a  set  of 
discriminated  elements  connected  by  relations.  This 
combination  of  opposite  factors  of  unity  and  difference, 
elements  and  relations,  has  been  a  standing  paradox  and 
mystery  of  the  theory  of  knowledge.  It  will  remain  so 
until  we  connect  the  theory  of  knowledge  with  an  em- 
pirically verifiable  theory  of  behavior.  The  steps  of 
this  connection  have  been  sketched  and  we  may  enumer- 
ate them.  We  know  at  such  times  as  habits  are 
impeded,  when  a  conflict  is  set  up  in  which  impulse  is 
released.  So  far  as  this  impulse  sets  up  a  definite  for- 
ward tendency  it  constitutes  the  forward,  prospective 
character  of  knowledge.  In  this  phase  unity  or  syn- 
thesis is  found.  We  are  striving  to  unify  our  responses, 
to  achieve  a  consistent  environment  which  will  restore 
unity  of  conduct.  Unity,  relations,  are  prospective; 
they  mark  out  lines  converging  to  a  focus.  They  are 
"  ideal."  But  what  we  know,  the  objects  that  present 


184         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

themselves  with  definiteness  and  assurance,  are  retro- 
spective; they  are  the  conditions  which  have  been  mas- 
tered, incorporated  in  the  past.  They  are  elements, 
discriminated,  analytic  just  because  old  habits  so  far 
as  they  are  checked  are  also  broken  into  objects  which 
define  the  obstruction  of  ongoing  activity.  They  are 
"  real,"  not  ideal.  Unity  is  something  sought ;  split, 
division  is  something  given,  at  hand.  Were  we  to  carry 
the  same  psychology  into  detail  we  should  come  upon 
the  explanation  of  perceived  particulars  and  conceived 
universals,  of  the  relation  of  discovery  and  proof,  in- 
duction and  deduction,  the  discrete  and  the  continuous. 
Anything  approaching  an  adequate  discussion  is  too 
technical  to  be  here  in  plaje.  But  the  main  point, 
however  technical  and  abstract  it  may  be  in  statement, 
is  of  far  reaching  importance  for  everything  concerned 
with  moral  beliefs,  conscience  and  judgments  of  right 
and  wrong. 

The  most  general,  if  vaguest  issue,  concerns  the  na- 
ture of  the  organ  of  moral  knowledge.  As  long  as 
knowledge  in  general  is  thought  to  be  the  work  of  a 
special  agent,  whether  soul,  consciousness,  intellect  or 
a  knower  in  general,  there  is  a  logical  propulsion  to- 
wards postulating  a  special  agent  for  knowledge  of 
moral  distinctions.  Consciousness  and  conscience  have 
more  than  a  verbal  connection.  If  the  former  is  some- 
thing in  itself,  a  seat  or  power  which  antecedes  intel- 
lectual functions,  why  should  not  the  latter  be  also  a 
unique  faculty  with  its  own  separate  jurisdiction?  If 
reason  in  general  is  independent  of  empirically  verifi- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THINKING         185 

able  realities  of  human  nature,  such  as  instincts  and 
organized  habits,  why  should  there  not  also  exist  a 
moral  or  practical  reason  independent  of  natural  op- 
erations? On  the  other  hand  if  it  is  recognized  that 
knowing  is  carried  on  through  the  medium  of  natural 
factors,  the  assumption  of  special  agencies  for  moral 
knowing  becomes  outlawed  and  incredible.  Now  the 
matter  of  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  such  special 
agencies  is  no  technically  remote  matter.  The  belief 
in  a  separate  organ  involves  belief  in  a  separate  and 
independent  subject-matter.  The  question  fundamen- 
tally at  issue  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  whether 
moral  values,  regulations,  principles  and  objects  form 
a  separate  and  independent  domain  or  whether  they  are 
part  and  parcel  of  a  normal  development  of  a  life 
process. 

These  considerations  explain  why  the  denial  of  a 
separate  organ  of  knowledge,  of  a  separate  instinct  or 
impulse  toward  knowing,  is  not  the  wilful  philistinism 
it  is  sometimes  alleged  to  be.  There  is  of  course  a  sense 
in  which  there  is  a  distinctive  impulse,  or  rather  habit- 
ual disposition,  to  know.  But  in  the  same  sense  there 
is  an  impulse  to  aviate,  to  run  a  typewriter  or  write 
stories  for  magazines.  Some  activities  result  in  knowl- 
edge, as  others  result  in  these  other  things.  The  result 
may  be  so  important  as  to  induce  distinctive  attention  to 
the  activities  in  order  to  foster  them.  From  an  incident, 
almost  a  by-product,  attainment  of  truth,  physical,  so- 
cial, moral,  may  become  the  leading  characteristic  of 
some  activities.  Under  such  circumstances,  they  be- 


186          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

come  transformed.  Knowing  is  then  a  distinctive  activ- 
ity, with  its  own  ends  and  its  peculiarly  adapted  pro- 
cesses. All  this  is  a  matter  of  course.  Having  hit 
upon  knowledge  accidentally,  as  it  were,  and  the  prod- 
uct being  liked  and  its  importance  noted,  knowledge- 
getting  becomes,  upon  occasion,  a  definite  occupation. 
And  education  confirms  the  disposition,  as  it  may  con- 
firm that  of  a  musician  or  carpenter  or  tennis- 
player.  But  there  is  no  more  an  original  separate  im- 
pulse or  power  in  one  case  than  in  the  other.  Every 
habit  is  impulsive,  that  is  projective,  urgent,  and  the 
habit  of  knowing  is  no  exception. 

The  reason  for  insisting  on  this  fact  is  not  failure 
to  appreciate  the  distinctive  value  of  knowledge  when 
once  it  comes  into  existence.  This  value  is  so  immense 
it  may  be  called  unique.  The  aim  of  the  discussion  is 
not  to  subordinate  knowing  to  some  hard,  prosaic  utili- 
tarian end.  The  reason  for  insistence  upon  the  deriva- 
tive position  of  knowing  in  activity,  roots  in  a  sense  for 
fact,  and  in  a  realization  that  the  doctrine  of  a  sepa- 
rate original  power  and  impulse  of  knowledge  cuts 
knowledge  off  from  other  phases  of  human  nature,  and 
results  in  its  non-natural  treatment.  The  isolation  of 
intellectual  disposition  from  concrete  empirical  facts 
of  biological  impulse  and  habit-formation  entails  a  de- 
nial of  the  continuity  of  mind  with  nature.  Aristotle 
asserted  that  the  faculty  of  pure  knowing  enters  a  man 
from  without  as  through  a  door.  Many  since  his  day 
have  asserted  that  knowing  and  doing  have  no  intrinsic 
connection  with  each  other.  Reason  is  asserted  to  have 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THINKING          187 

no  responsibility  to  experience ;  conscience  is  said  to  be 
a  sublime  oracle  independent  of  education  and  social  in- 
fluences. All  of  these  views  follow  naturally  from  a 
failure  to  recognize  that  all  knowing,  judgment,  belief 
represent  an  acquired  result  of  the  workings  of  natural 
impulses  in  connection  with  environment. 

Upon  the  ethical  side,  as  has  been  intimated,  the  mat- 
ter at  issue  concerns  the  nature  of  conscience.  Con- 
science has  been  asserted  by  orthodox  moralists  to  be 
unique  in  origin  and  subject-matter.  The  same  view  is 
embodied  by  implication  in  all  those  popular  methods 
of  moral  training  which  attempt  to  fix  rigid  authorita- 
tive notions  of  right  and  wrong  by  disconnecting  moral 
judgments  from  the  aids  and  tests  which  are  used  in 
other  forms  of  knowledge.  Thus  it  has  been  asserted 
that  conscience  is  an  original  faculty  of  illumination 
which  (if  it  has  not  been  dimmed  by  indulgence  in  sin) 
shines  upon  moral  truths  and  objects  and  reveals  them 
without  effort  for  precisely  what  they  are.  Those  who 
hold  this  view  differ  enormously  among  themselves  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  objects  of  conscience.  Some  hold 
them  to  be  general  principles,  others  individual  acts, 
others  the  order  of  worth  among  motives,  others  the 
sense  of  duty  in  general,  others  the  unqualified  author- 
ity of  right.  Still  others  carry  the  implied  logic  of 
authority  to  conclusion,  and  identify  knowledge  of 
moral  truths  with  a  divine  supernatural  revelation  of  a 
code  of  commandments. 

But  among  these  diversities  there  is  agreement  about 
one  fundamental.  There  must  be  a  separate  non- 


188         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

natural  faculty  of  moral  knowledge  because  the  things 
to  be  known,  the  matters  of  right  and  wrong,  good  and 
evil,  obligation  and  responsibility,  form  a  separate  do- 
main, separate  that  is  from  that  of  ordinary  action  in 
its  usual  human  and  social  significance.  The  latter  ac- 
tivities may  be  prudential,  political,  scientific,  economic. 
But,  from  the  standpoint  of  these  theories,  they  have 
no  moral  meaning  until  they  are  brought  under  the 
purview  of  this  separate  unique  department  of  our 
nature.  It  thus  turns  out  that  the  so-called  intuitional 
theories  of  moral  knowledge  concentrate  in  themselves 
all  the  ideas  which  are  subject  to  criticism  in  these 
pages:  Namely,  the  assertion  that  morality  is  distinct 
in  origin,  working  and  destiny  from  the  natural  struc- 
ture and  career  of  human  nature.  This  fact  is  the  ex- 
cuse, if  excuse  be  desired,  for  a  seemingly  technical 
excursion  that  links  intellectual  activity  with  the  con- 
joint operation  of  habit  and  impulse. 


Ill 


So  far  the  discussion  has  ignored  the  fact  that  there 
is  an  influential  school  of  moralists  (best  represented 
in  contemporary  thought  by  the  utilitarians)  which 
also  insists  upon  the  natural,  empirical  character  of 
moral  judgments  and  beliefs.  But  unfortunately  this 
school  has  followed  a  false  psychology ;  and  has  tended, 
by  calling  out  a  reaction,  actually  to  strengthen  the 
hands  of  those  who  persist  in  assigning  to  morals  a 
separate  domain  of  action  and  in  demanding  a  separate 
agent  of  moral  knowledge.  The  essentials  of  this  false 
psychology  consist  in  two  traits.  The  first,  that  knowl- 
edge originates  from  sensations  (instead  of  from  habits 
and  impulses);  and  the  second,  that  judgment  about 
good  and  evil  in  action  consists  in  calculation  of  agree- 
able and  disagreeable  consequences,  of  profit  and  loss. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  this  view  seems  to  many  to 
degrade  morals,  as  well  as  to  be  false  to  facts.  If  the 
logical  outcome  of  an  empirical  view  of  moral  knowledge 
is  that  all  morality  is  concerned  with  calculating  what 
is  expedient,  politic,  prudent,  measured  by  consequences 
in  the  ways  of  pleasurable  and  painful  sensations,  then, 
say  moralists  of  the  orthodox  school,  we  will  have 
naught  to  do  with  such  a  sordid  view:  It  is  a  reduction 
to  the  absurd  of  its  premisses.  We  will  have  a 

189 


190         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

rate  department  for  morals  and  a  separate  organ  of 
moral  knowledge. 

Our  first  problem  is  then  to  investigate  the  nature 
of  ordinary  judgments  upon  what  it  is  best  or  wise  to 
do,  or,  in  ordinary  language,  the  nature  of  deliberation. 
We  begin  with  a  summary  assertion  that  deliberation  is 
a  dramatic  rehearsal  (in  imagination)  of  various  com- 
peting possible  lines  of  action.  It  starts  from  the 
blocking  of  efficient  overt  action,  due  to  that  conflict 
of  prior  habit  and  newly  released  impulse  to  which  ref- 
erence has  been  made.  Then  each  habit,  each  impulse, 
involved  in  the  temporary  suspense  of  overt  action 
takes  its  turn  in  being  tried  out.  Deliberation  is  an 
experiment  in  finding  out  what  the  various  lines  of  pos- 
sible action  are  really  like.  It  is  an  experiment  in 
making  various  combinations  of  selected  elements  of 
habits  and  impulses,  to  see  what  the  resultant  action 
would  be  like  if  it  were  entered  upon.  But  the  trial  is 
in  imagination,  not  in  overt  fact.  The  experiment  is 
carried  on  by  tentative  rehearsals  in  thought  which  do 
not  affect  physical  facts  outside  the  body.  Thought 
runs  ahead  and  foresees  outcomes,  and  thereby  avoids 
having  to  await  the  instruction  of  actual  failure  and 
disaster.  An  act  overtly  tried  out  is  irrevocable,  its 
consequences  cannot  be  blotted  out.  An  act  tried  out 
in  imagination  is  not  final  or  fatal.  It  is  retrievable. 

Each  conflicting  habit  and  impulse  takes  its  turn  in 
projecting  itself  upon  the  screen  of  imagination.  It 
unrolls  a  picture  of  its  future  history,  of  the  career  it 
would  have  if  it  were  given  head.  Although  overt  ex- 


THE  NATURE  OF  DELIBERATION          191 

hibition  is  checked  by  the  pressure  of  contrary  propul- 
sive tendencies,  this  very  inhibition  gives  habit  a  chance 
at  manifestation  in  thought.  Deliberation  means  pre- 
cisely that  activity  is  disintegrated,  and  that  its  various 
elements  hold  one  another  up.  While  none  has  force 
enough  to  become  the  center  of  a  re-directed  activity, 
or  to  dominate  a  course  of  action,  each  has  enough 
power  to  check  others  from  exercising  mastery.  Activ- 
ity does  not  cease  in  order  to  give  way  to  reflection; 
activity  is  turned  from  execution  into  intra-organic 
channels,  resulting  in  dramatic  rehearsal. 

If  activity  were  directly  exhibited  it  would  result  in 
certain  experiences,  contacts  with  the  environment.  It 
would  succeed  by  making  environing  objects,  things  and 
persons,  co-partners  in  its  forward  movement;  or  else 
it  would  run  against  obstacles  and  be  troubled,  pos- 
sibly defeated.  These  experiences  of  contact  with  ob- 
jects and  their  qualities  give  meaning,  character,  to  an 
otherwise  fluid,  unconscious  activity.  We  find  out  what 
seeing  means  by  the  objects  which  are  seen.  They  con- 
stitute the  significance  of  visual  activity  which  would 
otherwise  remain  a  blank.  "  Pure  "  activity  is  for  con- 
sciousness pure  emptiness.  It  acquires  a  content  or 
filling  of  meanings  only  in  static  termini,  what  it  comes 
to  rest  in,  or  in  the  obstacles  which  check  its  onward 
movement  and  deflect  it.  As  has  been  remarked,  the  ob- 
ject is  that  which  objects. 

There  is  no  difference  in  this  respect  between  a  visible 
course  of  conduct  and  one  proposed  in  deliberation. 
We  have  no  direct  consciousness  of  what  we  purpose 


192          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

to  do.  We  can  judge  its  nature,  assign  its  meaning, 
only  by  following  it  into  the  situations  whither  it  leads, 
noting  the  objects  against  which  it  runs  and  seeing  how 
they  rebuff  or  unexpectedly  encourage  it.  In  imagina- 
tion as  in  fact  we  know  a  road  only  by  what  we  see  as 
we  travel  on  it.  Moreover  the  objects  which  prick  out 
the  course  of  a  proposed  act  until  we  can  see  its  design 
also  serve  to  direct  eventual  overt  activity.  Every  ob- 
ject hit  upon  as  the  habit  traverses  its  imaginary  path 
has  a  direct  effect  upon  existing  activities.  It  rein- 
forces, inhibits,  redirects  habits  already  working  or 
stirs  up  others  which  had  not  previously  actively 
entered  in.  In  thought  as  well  as  in  overt  action,  the 
objects  experienced  in  following  out  a  course  of  action 
attract,  repel,  satisfy,  annoy,  promote  and  retard. 
Thus  deliberation  proceeds.  To  say  that  at  last  it 
ceases  is  to  say  that  choice,  decision,  takes  place. 

What  then  is  choice?  Simply  hitting  in  imagination 
upon  an  object  which  furnishes  an  adequate  stimulus 
to  the  recovery  of  overt  action.  Choice  is  made  as  soon 
as  some  habit,  or  some  combination  of  elements  of  habits 
and  impulse,  finds  a  way  fully  open.  Then  energy  is 
released.  The  mind  is  made  up,  composed,  unified.  As 
long  as  deliberation  pictures  shoals  or  rocks  or  trouble- 
some gales  as  marking  the  route  of  a  contemplated 
voyage,  deliberation  goes  on.  But  when  the  various 
factors  in  action  fit  harmoniously  together,  when  imag- 
ination finds  no  annoying  hindrance,  when  there  is  a 
picture  of  open  seas,  filled  sails  and  favoring  winds,  the 
voyage  is  definitely  entered  upon.  This  decisive  direc- 


THE  NATURE  OF  DELIBERATION          193 

tion  of  action  constitutes  choice.  It  is  a  great  error  to 
suppose  that  we  have  no  preferences  until  there  is  a 
choice.  We  are  always  biased  beings,  tending  in  one 
direction  rather  than  another.  The  occasion  of  de- 
liberation is  an  excess  of  preferences,  not  natural 
apathy  or  an  absence  of  likings.  We  want  things  that 
are  incompatible  with  one  another;  therefore  we  have 
to  make  a  choice  of  what  we  really  want,  of  the  course 
of  action,  that  is,  which  most  fully  releases  activities. 
Choice  is  not  the  emergence  of  preference  out  of  indif- 
ference. It  is  the  emergence  of  a  unified  preference  out 
of  competing  preferences.  Biases  that  had  held  one 
another  in  check  now,  temporarily  at  least,  reinforce 
one  another,  and  constitute  a  unified  attitude.  The 
moment  arrives  when  imagination  pictures  an  objective 
consequence  of  action  which  supplies  an  adequate  stim- 
ulus and  releases  definitive  action.  All  deliberation  is 
a  search  for  a  way  to  act,  not  for  a  final  terminus.  Its 
office  is  to  facilitate  stimulation. 

Hence  there  is  reasonable  and  unreasonable  choice. 
The  object  thought  of  may  simply  stimulate  some  im- 
pulse or  habit  to  a  pitch  of  intensity  where  it  is  tem- 
porarily irresistible.  It  then  overrides  all  competitors 
and  secures  for  itself  the  sole  right  of  way.  The  object 
looms  large  in  imagination ;  it  swells  to  fill  the  field.  It 
allows  no  room  for  alternatives;  it  absorbs  us,  en- 
raptures us,  carries  us  away,  sweeps  us  off  our  feet  by 
its  own  attractive  force.  Then  choice  is  arbitrary,  un- 
reasonable. But  the  object  thought  of  may  be  one 
which  stimulates  by  unifying,  harmonizing,  different 


194 

competing  tendencies.  It  may  release  an  activity  in 
which  all  are  fulfilled,  not  indeed,  in  their  original  form, 
but  in  a  "  sublimated  "  fashion,  that  is  in  a  way  which 
modifies  the  original  direction  of  each  by  reducing  it 
to  a  component  along  with  others  in  an  action  of  trans- 
formed quality.  Nothing  is  more  extraordinary  than 
the  delicacy,  promptness  and  ingenuity  with  which  de- 
liberation is  capable  of  making  eliminations  and  re- 
combinations in  projecting  the  course  of  a  possible 
activity.  To  every  shade  of  imagined  circumstance 
there  is  a  vibrating  response ;  and  to  every  complex  sit- 
uation a  sensitiveness  as  to  its  integrity,  a  feeling  of 
whether  it  does  justice  to  all  facts,  or  overrides  some 
to  the  advantage  of  others.  Decision  is  reasonable 
when  deliberation  is  so  conducted.  There  may  be 
error  in  the  result,  but  it  comes  from  lack  of  data  not 
from  ineptitude  in  handling  them. 

These  facts  give  us  the  key  to  the  old  controversy 
as  to  the  respective  places  of  desire  and  reason  in  con- 
duct. It  is  notorious  that  some  moralists  have  de- 
plored the  influence  of  desire ;  they  have  found  the  heart 
of  strife  between  good  and  evil  in  the  conflict  of  desire 
with  reason,  in  which  the  former  has  force  on  its  side 
and  the  latter  authority.  But  reasonableness  is  in  fact 
a  quality  of  an  effective  relationship  among  desires 
rather  than  a  thing  opposed  to  desire.  It  signifies  the 
order,  perspective,  proportion  which  is  achieved,  during 
deliberation,  out  of  a  diversity  of  earlier  incompatible 
preferences.  Choice  is  reasonable  when  it  induces  us 
to  act  reasonably;  that  is,  with  regard  to  the  claims 


THE  NATURE  OF  DELIBERATION          195 

of  each  of  the  competing  habits  and  impulses.  This 
implies,  of  course,  the  presence  of  a  comprehensive  ob- 
ject, one  which  coordinates,  organizes  and  functions 
each  factor  of  the  situation  which  gave  rise  to  conflict, 
suspense  and  deliberation.  This  is  as  true  when  some 
"  bad  "  impulses  and  habits  enter  in  as  when  approved 
ones  require  unification.  We  have  already  seen  the 
effects  of  choking  them  off,  of  efforts  at  direct  sup- 
pression. Bad  habits  can  be  subdued  only  by  being 
utilized  as  elements  in  a  new,  more  generous  and  com- 
prehensive scheme  of  action,  and  good  ones  be  pre- 
served from  rot  only  by  similar  use. 

The  nature  of  the  strife  of  reason  and  passion  is 
well  stated  by  William  James.  The  cue  of  passion,  he 
says  in  effect,  istokeep  imagination  dwelling  upon 
those  objects  which  are  congenial  to  it,  whicfr  feed  it, 
and  which  by  feeding  it  intensify  its  force,  until  it 
crowds  out  all  Thought  ofother  objects.  An  impulse 
or  habit  which  is  strongly  emotional  magnifies  all  ob- 
jects that  are  congruous  with  it  and  smothers  those 
which  are  opposed  whenever  they  present  themselves.  A 
passionate  activity  learns  to  work  itself  up  artificially 
— as  Oliver  Cromwell  indulged  in  fits  of  anger  when 
he  wanted  to  do  things  that  his  conscience  would  not 
justify.  A  presentiment  is  felt  that  if  the  thought  of 
contrary  objects  is  allowed  to  get  a  lodgment  in  imagi- 
nation, these  objects  will  work  and  work  to  chill  and 
freeze  out  the  ardent  passion  of  the  moment. 

The  conclusion  is  not  that  the  emotional,  passionate 
phase  of  action  can  be  or  should  be  eliminated  in  be- 


196         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

half  of  a  bloodless  reason.  More  "  passions,"  not  fewer, 
is  the  answer.  To  check  the  influence  of  hate  there  must 
be  sympathy,  while  to  rationalize  sympathy  there  are 
needed  emotions  of  curiosity,  caution,  respect  for  the 
freedom  of  others — dispositions  which  evoke  objects 
which  balance  those  called  up  by  sympathy,  and  pre- 
vent its  degeneration  into  maudlin  sentiment  and  med- 
dling interference.  Rationality,  once  more,  is  not  a 
force  to  evoke  against  impulse  and  habit.  It  is  the 
attainment  of  a  working  harmony  among  diverse  de- 
sires. "  Reason  "  as  a  noun  signifies  the  happy  cooper- 
ation of  a  multitude  of  dispositions,  such  as  sympathy, 
curiosity,  exploration,  experimentation,  frankness,  pur- 
suit— to  follow  things  through — circumspection,  to 
look  about  at  the  context,  etc.,  etc.  The  elaborate  sys- 
tems of  science  are  born  not  of  reason  but  of  impulses 
at  first  slight  and  flickering;  impulses  to  handle,  move 
about,  to  hunt,  to  uncover,  to  mix  things  separated  and 
divide  things  combined,  to  talk  and  to  listen.  Method 
is  their  effectual  organization  into  continuous  dispo- 
sitions of  inquiry,  development  and  testing.  It  occurs 
after  these  acts  and  because  of  their  consequences. 
Reason,  the  rational  attitude,  is  the  resulting  disposi- 
tion, not  a  ready-made  antecedent  which  can  be  in- 
voked at  will  and  set  into  movement.  The  man  who 
would  intelligently  cultivate  intelligence  will  widen,  not 
narrow,  his  life  of  strong  impulses  while  aiming  at  their 
happy  coincidence  in  operation. 

The  clew  of  impulse  is,  as  we  say,  to  start  some- 
thing.   It  is  in  a  hurry.    It  rushes  us  off  our  feet.    It 


THE  NATURE  OF  DELIBERATION          197 

leaves  no  time  for  examination,  memory  and  foresight. 
But  the  clew  of  reason  is,  as  the  phrase  also  goes,  to 
stop  and  think.  Force,  however,  is  required  to  stop  the 
ongoing  of  a  habit  or  impulse.  This  is  supplied  by 
another  habit.  The  resulting  period  of  delay,  of  sus- 
pended and  postponed  overt  action,  is  the  period  in 
which  activities  that  are  refused  direct  outlet  project 
imaginative  counterparts.  It  signifies,  in  technical 
phrase,  the  mediation  of  impulse.  For  an  isolated  im- 
pulse is  immediate,  narrowing  the  world  down  to  the 
directly  present.  Variety  of  competing  tendencies  en- 
larges the  world.  It  brings  a  diversity  of  considera- 
tions before  the  mind,  and  enables  action  to  take  place 
finally  in  view  of  an  object  generously  conceived  and 
delicately  refined,  composed  by  a  long  process  of 
selections  and  combinations.  In  popular  phrase,  to  be 
deliberate  is  to  be  slow,  unhurried.  It  takes  time  to  put 
objects  in  order. 

There  are  however  vices  of  reflection  as  well  as  of 
impulse.  We  may  not  look  far  enough  ahead  because 
we  are  hurried  into  action  by  stress  of  impulse;  but 
we  may  also  become  overinterested  in  the  delights  of 
reflection;  we  become  afraid  of  assuming  the  responsi- 
bilities of  decisive  choice  and  action,  and  in  general  be 
sicklied  over  by  a  pale  cast  of  thought.  We  may  be- 
come so  curious  about  remote  and  abstract  matters 
that  we  give  only  a  begrudged,  impatient  attention  to 
the  things  right  about  us.  We  may  fancy  we  are  glori- 
fying the  love  of  truth  for  its  own  sake  when  we  are 
only  indulging  a  pet  occupation  and  slighting  demands 


198          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

of  the  immediate  situation.  Men  who  devote  themselves 
to  thinking  are  likely  to  be  unusually  unthinking  in 
some  respects,  as  for  example  in  immediate  personal  re- 
lationships. A  man  to  whom  exact  scholarship  is  an 
absorbing  pursuit  may  be  more  than  ordinarily  vague 
in  ordinary  matters.  Humility  and  impartiality  may 
be  shown  in  a  specialized  field,  and  pettiness  and  ar- 
rogance in  dealing  with  other  persons.  "  Reason  "  is 
not  an  antecedent  force  which  serves  as  a  panacea.  It 
is  a  laborious  achievement  of  habit  needing  to  be  con- 
tinually worked  over.  A  balanced  arrangement  of  pro- 
pulsive activities  manifested  in  deliberation — namely, 
reason — depends  upon  a  sensitive  and  proportionate 
emotional  sensitiveness.  Only  a  one-sided,  over-special- 
ized emotion  leads  to  thinking  of  it  as  separate  from 
emotion.  The  traditional  association  of  justice  and 
reason  has  good  psychology  back  of  it.  Both  imply  a 
balanced  distribution  of  thought  and  energy.  Delib- 
eration is  irrational  in  the  degree  in  which  an  end  is 
so  fixed,  a  passion  or  interest  so  absorbing,  that  the 
foresight  of  consequences  is  warped  to  include  only 
what  furthers  execution  of  its  predetermined  bias.  De- 
liberation is  rational  in  the  degree  in  which  forethought 
flexibly  remakes  old  aims  and  habits,  institutes  percep- 
tion and  love  of  new  ends  and  acts. 


IV 


We  now  return  to  a  consideration  of  the  utilitarian 
theory  according  to  which  deliberation  consists  in  cal- 
culation of  courses  of  action  on  the  basis  of  the  profit 
and  loss  to  which  they  lead.  The  contrast  of  this  no- 
tion with  fact  is  obvious.  The  office  of  deliberation  is 
not  to  supply  an  inducement  to  act  by  figuring  out 
where  the  most  advantage  is  to  be  procured.  It  is  to 
resolve  entanglements  in  existing  activity,  restore  con- 
tinuity, recover  harmony,  utilize  loose  impulse  and  re- 
direct habit.  To  this  end  observation  of  present  con- 
ditions, recollection  of  previous  situations  are  devoted. 
Deliberation  has  its  beginning  in  troubled  activity  and 
its  conclusion  in  choice  of  a  course  of  action  which 
straightens  it  out.  It  no  more  resembles  the  casting-up 
of  accounts  of  profit  and  loss,  pleasures  and  pains,  than 
an  actor  engaged  in  drama  resembles  a  clerk  recording 
debit  and  credit  items  in  his  ledger. 

The  primary  fact  is  that  man  is  a  being  who  responds 
in  action  to  the  stimuli  of  the  environment.  This  fact 
is  complicated  in  deliberation,  but  it  certainly  is  not 
abolished.  We  continue  to  react  to  an  object  presented 
in  imagination  as  we  react  to  objects  presented  in  ob- 
servation. The  baby  does  not  move  to  the  mother's 
breast  because  of  calculation  of  the  advantages  of 
warmth  and  food  over  against  the  pains  of  effort.  Nor 

199 


200          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

does  the  miser  seek  gold,  nor  the  architect  strive  t<i 
make  plans,  nor  the  physician  to  heal,  because  of  reck; 
onings  of  comparative  advantage  and  disadvantage. 
Habit,  occupation,  furnishes  the  necessity  of  forward 
action  in  one  case  as  instinct  does  in  the  other.  We  do 
not  act  from  reasoning;  but  reasoning  puts  before  us 
objects  which  are  not  directly  or  sensibly  present,  so 
that  we  then  may  react  directly  to  these  objects,  with 
aversion,  attraction,  indifference  or  attachment,  pre- 
cisely as  we  would  to  the  same  objects  if  they  were 
physically  present.  In  the  end  it  results  in  a  case  of 
direct  stimulus  and  response.  In  one  case  the  stimulus 
is  presented  at  once  through  sense ;  in  the  other  case,  it 
is  indirectly  reached  through  memory  and  constructive 
imagination.  But  the  matter  of  directness  and  in- 
directness concerns  the  way  the  stimulus  is  reached, 
not  the  way  in  which  it  operates. 

Joy  and  suffering,  pain  and  pleasure,  the  agreeable 
and  disagreeable,  play  their  considerable  role  in  de- 
liberation. Not,  however,  by  way  of  a  calculated  es- 
timate of  future  delights  and  miseries,  but  by  way  of 
experiencing  present  ones.  The  reaction  of  joy  and 
sorrow,  elation  and  depression,  is  as  natural  a  response 
to  objects  presented  in  imagination  as  to  those  pre- 
sented in  sense.  Complacency  and  annoyance  follow 
hard  at  the  heels  of  any  object  presented  in  image  as 
they  do  upon  its  sensuous  experience.  Some  objects 
when  thought  of  are  congruent  to  our  existing  state 
of  activity.  They  fit  in,  they  are  welcome.  They  agree, 
or  are  agreeable,  not  as  matter  of  calculation  but  as 


DELIBERATION  AND  CALCULATION       201 

matter  of  experienced  fact.  Other  objects  rasp;  they 
cut  across  activity;  they  are  tiresome,  hateful,  un- 
welcome. They  disagree  with  the  existing  trend  of 
activity,  that  is,  they  are  disagreeable,  and  in  no  other 
way  than  as  a  bore  who  prolongs  his  visit,  a  dun  we 
can't  pay,  or  a  pestiferous  mosquito  who  goes  on  buzz- 
ing. We  do  not  think  of  future  losses  and  expansions. 
We  think,  through  imagination,  of  objects  into  which 
in  the  future  some  course  of  action  will  run,  and  we 
are  now  delighted  or  depressed,  pleased  or  pained  at 
what  is  presented.  This  running  commentary  of  likes 
and  dislikes,  attractions  and  disdains,  joys  and  sor- 
rows, reveals  to  any  man  who  is  intelligent  enough  to 
note  them  and  to  study  their  occasions  his  own  char- 
acter. It  instructs  him  as  to  the  composition  and  di- 
rection of  the  activities  that  make  him  what  he  is.  To 
know  what  jars  an  activity  and  what  agrees  with  it  is 
to  know  something  important  about  that  activity  and 
about  ourselves. 

Some  one  may  ask  what  practical  difference  it  makes 
whether  we  are  influenced  by  calculation  of  future  joys 
and  annoyances  or  by  experience  of  present  ones.  To 
such  a  question  one  can  hardly  reply  except  in  the 
words  "  All  the  difference  in  the  world."  In  the  first 
place,  no  difference  can  be  more  important  than  that 
which  concerns  the  nature  of  the  subject-matter  of  de- 
liberation. The  calculative  theory  would  have  it  that 
this  subject-matter  is  future  feelings,  sensations,  and 
that  actions  and  thought  are  external  means  to  get 
and  avoid  these  sensations.  If  such  a  theory  has  any 


202          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

practical  influence,  it  is  to  advise  a  person  to  concen- 
trate upon  his  own  most  subjective  and  private  feelings. 
It  gives  him  no  choice  except  between  a  sickly  intro- 
spection and  an  intricate  calculus  of  remote,  inaccessi- 
ble and  indeterminate  results.  In  fact,  deliberation,  as 
a  tentative  trying-out  of  various  courses  of  action,  is 
outlooking.  It  flies  toward  and  settles  upon  objective 
situations  not  upon  feelings.  No  doubt  we  sometimes 
fall  to  deliberating  upon  the  effect  of  action  upon  our 
future  feelings,  thinking  of  a  situation  mainly  with  ref- 
erence to  the  comforts  and  discomforts  it  will  excite  in 
us.  But  these  moments  are  precisely  our  sentimental 
moments  of  self-pity  or  self-glorification.  They  con- 
duce to  morbidity,  sophistication,  isolation  from  others ; 
while  facing  our  acts  in  terms  of  their  objective  con- 
sequences leads  to  enlightenment  and  to  consideration 
of  others.  The  first  objection  therefore  to  deliberation 
as  a  calculation  of  future  feelings  is  that,  if  it  is  con- 
sistently adhered  to,  it  makes  an  abnormal  case  the 
standard  one. 

If  however  an  objective  estimate  is  attempted, 
thought  gets  speedily  lost  in  a  task  impossible  of 
achievement.  Future  pleasures  and  pains  are  influ- 
enced by  two  factors  which  are  independent  of  present 
choice  and  effort.  They  depend  upon  our  own  state  at 
some  future  moment  and  upon  the  surrounding  cir- 
cumstances of  that  moment.  Both  of  these  are  vari- 
ables which  change  independently  of  present  resolve  and 
action.  They  are  much  more  important  determinants 
of  future  sensations  than  is  anything  which  can  now  be 


DELIBERATION  AND  CALCULATION       203 

calculated.  Things  sweet  in  anticipation  are  bitter  in 
actual  taste,  things  we  now  turn  from  in  aversion  are 
welcome  at  another  moment  in  our  career.  Independ- 
ently of  deep  changes  in  character,  such  as  from  merci- 
fulness to  callousness,  from  fretfulness  to  cheerfulness, 
there  are  unavoidable  changes  in  the  waxing  and  wan- 
ing of  activity.  A  child  pictures  a  future  of  unlimited 
toys  and  unrestricted  sweetmeats.  An  adult  pictures  an 
object  as  giving  pleasure  while  he  is  empty  while  the 
thing  arrives  in  a  moment  of  repletion.  A  sympathetic 
person  reckons  upon  the  utilitarian  basis  the  pains  of 
others  as  a  debit  item  in  his  calculations.  But  why  not 
harden  himself  so  that  others'  sufferings  won't  count? 
Why  not  foster  an  arrogant  cruelty  so  that  the  suf- 
fering of  others  which  will  follow  from  one's  own  action 
will  fall  on  the  credit  side  of  the  reckoning,  be  pleasur- 
able, all  to  the  good? 

Future  pleasures  and  pains,  even  of  one's  own,  are 
among  the  things  most  elusive  of  calculation.  Of  all 
things  they  lend  themselves  least  readily  to  anything 
approaching  a  mathematical  calculus.  And  the  further 
into  the  future  we  extend  our  view,  and  the  more  the 
pleasures  of  others  enter  into  the  account,  the  more 
hopeless  does  the  problem  of  estimating  future  conse- 
quences become.  All  of  the  elements  become  more  and 
more  indeterminate.  Even  if  one  could  form  a  fairly 
accurate  picture  of  the  things  that  give  pleasure  to 
most  people  at  the  present  moment — an  exceedingly 
difficult  task — he  cannot  foresee  the  detailed  circum- 
stances which  will  give  a  decisive  turn  to  enjoyment  at 


204.         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

future  times  and  remote  places.  Do  pleasures  due  to 
defective  education  or  unrefined  disposition,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  pleasures  of  sensuality  and  brutality, 
rank  the  same  as  those  of  cultivated  persons  having 
acute  social  sensitiveness?  The  only  reason  the  im- 
possibility of  the  hedonistic  calculus  is  not  self-evident 
is  that  theorists  in  considering  it  unconsciously  sub- 
stitute for  calculation  of  future  pleasures  an  apprecia- 
tion of  present  ones,  a  present  realization  in  imagina- 
tion of  future  objective  situations. 

For,  in  truth,  a  man's  judgment  of  future  joys  and 
sorrows  is  but  a  projection  of  what  now  satisfies  and 
annoys  him.  A  man  of  considerate  disposition  now 
feels  hurt  at  the  thought  of  an  act  bringing  harm  to 
others,  and  so  he  is  on  the  lookout  for  consequences  of 
that  sort,  ranking  them  as  of  high  importance.  He 
may  even  be  so  abnormally  sensitive  to  such  conse- 
quences that  he  is  held  back  from  needed  vigorous  ac- 
tion. He  fears  to  do  the  things  which  are  for  the  real 
welfare  of  others  because  he  shrinks  from  the  thought 
of  the  pain  to  be  inflicted  upon  them  by  needed  meas- 
ures. A  man  of  an  executive  type,  engrossed  in  carry- 
ing through  a  scheme,  will  react  in  present  emotion  to 
everything  concerned  with  its  external  success ;  the  pain 
its  execution  brings  to  others  will  not  occur  to  him,  or 
if  it  does,  his  mind  will  easily  glide  over  it.  This  sort 
of  consequence  will  seem  to  him  of  slight  importance 
in  comparison  with  the  commercial  or  political  changes 
which  bulk  in  his  plans.  What  a  man  foresees  and  fails 
to  foresee,  what  he  appraises  highly  and  at  a  low  rate, 


DELIBERATION  AND  CALCULATION       205 

what  he  deems  important  and  trivial,  what  he  dwells 
upon  and  what  he  slurs  over,  what  he  easily  recalls  and 
what  he  naturally  forgets — all  of  these  things  depend 
upon  his  character.  His  estimate  of  future  conse- 
quences of  the  agreeable  and  annoying  is  consequently 
of  much  greater  value  as  an  index  of  what  he  now  is 
than  as  a  prediction  of  future  results. 

One  has  only  to  read  between  the  lines  to  see  the 
enormous  difference  that  marks  off  modern  utilitarian- 
ism from  epicureanism,  in  spite  of  similarities  in  pro- 
fessed psychologies.  Epicureanism  is  too  worldly-wise 
to  indulge  in  attempts  to  base  present  action  upon  pre- 
carious estimates  of  future  and  universal  pleasures  and 
pains.  On  the  contrary  it  says  let  the  future  go,  for 
life  is  uncertain.  Who  knows  when  it  will  end,  or  what 
fortune  the  morrow  will  bring?  Foster,  then,  with  jeal- 
ous care  every  gift  of  pleasure  now  allotted  to  you, 
dwell  upon  it  with  lingering  love,  prolong  it  as  best  you 
may.  Utilitarianism  on  the  contrary  was  a  part  of  a 
philanthropic  and  reform  movement  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Its  commendation  of  an  elaborate  and  im- 
possible calculus  was  in  reality  part  of  a  movement  to 
develop  a  type  of  character  which  should  have  a  wide 
social  outlook,  sympathy  with  the  experiences  of  all 
sentient  creatures,  one  zealous  about  the  social  effects 
of  all  proposed  acts,  especially  those  of  collective  legis- 
lation and  administration.  It  was  concerned  not  with 
extracting  the  honey  of  the  passing  moment  but  with 
breeding  improved  bees  and  constructing  hives. 

After  all,  the  object  of  foresight  of  consequences  is 


206          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

not  to  predict  the  future.  It  is  to  ascertain  the  mean- 
ing of  present  activities  and  to  secure,  so  far  as  pos- 
sible, a  present  activity  with  a  unified  meaning.  We  are 
not  the  creators  of  heaven  and  earth;  we  have  no  re- 
sponsibility for  their  operations  save  as  their  motions 
are  altered  by  our  movements.  Our  concern  is  with 
the  significance  of  that  slight  fraction  of  total  activity 
which  starts  from  ourselves.  The  best  laid  plans  of 
men  as  well  of  mice  gang  aglee;  and  for  the  same 
reason:  inability  to  dominate  the  future.  The  power 
of  man  and  mouse  is  infinitely  constricted  in  comparison 
with  the  power  of  events.  Men  always  build  better  or 
worse  than  they  know,  for  their  acts  are  taken  up  into 
the  broad  sweep  of  events. 

Hence  the  problem  of  deliberation  is  not  to  calculate 
future  happenings  but  to  appraise  present  proposed 
actions.  We  judge  present  desires  and  habits  by  their 
tendency  to  produce  certain  consequences.  It  is  our 
business  to  watch  the  course  of  our  action  so  as  to  see 
what  is  the  significance,  the  import  of  our  habits  and 
dispositions.  The  future  outcome  is  not  certain.  But 
neither  is  it  certain  what  the  present  fire  will  do  in  the 
future.  It  may  be  unexpectedly  fed  or  extinguished. 
But  its  tendency  is  a  knowable  matter,  what  it  will  do 
under  certain  circumstances.  And  so  we  know  what  is 
the  tendency  of  malice,  charity,  conceit,  patience.  We 
know  by  observing  their  consequences,  by  recollecting 
what  we  have  observed,  by  using  that  recollection  in 
constructive  imaginative  forecasts  of  the  future,  by 


DELIBERATION  AND  CALCULATION       207 

using  the  thought  of  future  consequence  to  tell  the 
quality  of  the  act  now  proposed. 

Deliberation  is  not  calculation  of  indeterminate  fu- 
ture results.  The  present,  not  the  future,  is  ours.  No 
shrewdness,  no  store  of  information  will  make  it  ours. 
But  by  constant  watchfulness  concerning  the  tendency 
of  acts,  by  noting  disparities  between  former  judgments 
and  actual  outcomes,  and  tracing  that  part  of  the  dis- 
parity that  was  due  to  deficiency  and  excess  in  dispo- 
sition, we  come  to  know  the  meaning  of  present  acts, 
and  to  guide  them  in  the  light  of  that  meaning.  The 
moral  is  to  develop  conscientiousness,  ability  to  judge 
the  significance  of  what  we  are  doing  and  to  use  that 
judgment  in  directing  what  we  do,  not  by  means  of 
direct  cultivation  of  something  called  conscience,  or 
reason,  or  a  faculty  of  moral  knowledge,  but  by  fos- 
tering those  impulses  and  habits  which  experience  has 
shown  to  make  us  sensitive,  generous,  imaginative,  im- 
partial in  perceiving  the  tendency  of  our  inchoate  dawn- 
ing activities.  Every  attempt  to  forecast  the  future  is 
subject  in  the  end  to  the  auditing  of  present  concrete 
impulse  and  habit.  Therefore  the  important  thing  is 
the  fostering  of  those  habits  and  impulses  which  lead  to 
a  broad,  just,  sympathetic  survey  of  situations. 

The  occasion  of  deliberation,  that  is  of  the  attempt 
to  find  a  stimulus  to  complete  overt  action  in  thought 
of  some  future  object,  is  confusion  and  uncertainty 
in  present  activities.  A  similar  devision  in  activi- 
ties and  need  of  a  like  deliberative  activity  for  the 


208          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

sake  of  recovery  of  unity  is  sure  to  recur,  to  recur  again 
and  again,  no  matter  how  wise  the  decision.  Even  the 
most  comprehensive  deliberation  leading  to  the  most 
momentous  choice  only  fixes  a  disposition  which  has  to 
be  continuously  applied  in  new  and  unforeseen  condi- 
tions, re-adapted  by  future  deliberations.  Always  our 
old  habits  and  dispositions  carry  us  into  new  fields. 
We  have  to  be  always  learning  and  relearning  the  mean- 
ing of  our  active  tendencies.  Does  not  this  reduce 
moral  life  to  the  futile  toil  of  a  Sisyphus  who  is  for- 
ever rolling  a  stone  uphill  only  to  have  it  roll  back  so 
that  he  has  to  repeat  his  old  task?  Yes,  judged  from 
progress  made  in  a  control  of  conditions  which  shall 
stay  put  and  which  excludes  the  necessity  of  future  de- 
liberations and  reconsiderations.  No,  because  contin- 
ual search  and  experimentation  to  discover  the  mean- 
ing of  changing  activity,  keeps  activity  alive,  growing 
in  significance.  The  future  situation  involved  in  delib- 
eration is  of  necessity  marked  by  contingency.  What 
it  will  be  in  fact  remains  dependent  upon  conditions  that 
escape  our  foresight  and  power  of  regulation.  But 
foresight  which  draws  liberally  upon  the  lessons  of  past 
experience  reveals  the  tendency,  the  meaning,  of  present 
action ;  and,  once  more,  it  is  this  present  meaning  rather 
than  the  future  outcome  which  counts.  Imaginative 
forethought  of  the  probable  consequences  of  a  proposed 
act  keeps  that  act  from  sinking  below  consciousness  into 
routine  habit  or  whimsical  brutality.  It  preserves  the 
meaning  of  that  act  alive,  and  keeps  it  growing  in 
depth  and  refinement  of  meaning.  There  is  no  limit  to 


DELIBERATION  AND  CALCULATION       209 

the  amount  of  meaning  which  reflective  and  meditative 
habit  is  capable  of  importing  into  even  simple  acts, 
just  as  the  most  splendid  successes  of  the  skilful  execu- 
tive who  manipulates  events  may  be  accompanied  by  an 
incredibly  meager  and  superficial  consciousness. 


The  reason  for  dividing  conduct  into  two  distinct 
regions,  one  of  expediency  and  the  other  of  morality, 
disappears  when  the  psychology  that  identifies  ordi- 
nary deliberation  with  calculation  is  disposed  of.  There 
is  seen  to  be  but  one  issue  involved  in  all  reflection  upon 
conduct:  The  rectifying  of  present  troubles,  the  har- 
monizing of  present  incompatibilities  by  projecting  a 
course  of  action  which  gathers  into  itself  the  meaning 
of  them  all.  The  recognition  of  the  true  psychology 
also  reveals  to  us  the  nature  of  good  or  satisfaction. 
Good  consists  in  the  meaning  that  is  experienced  to 
belong  to  an  activity  when  conflict  and  entanglement 
of  various  incompatible  impulses  and  habits  terminate 
in  a  unified  orderly  release  in  action.  This  human  good, 
being  a  fulfilment  conditioned  upon  thought,  differs 
from  the  pleasures  which  an  animal  nature — of  course 
we  also  remain  animals  so  far  as  we  do  not  think — hits 
upon  accidentally.  Moreover  there  is  a  genuine  dif- 
ference between  a  false  good,  a  spurious  satisfaction, 
and  a  "  true  "  good,  and  there  is  an  empirical  test  for 
discovering  the  difference.  The  unification  which  ends 
thought  in  act  may  be  only  a  superficial  compromise, 
not  a  real  decision  but  a  postponement  of  the  issue. 
Many  of  our  so-called  decisions  are  of  this  nature.  Or 
it  may  present,  as  we  have  seen,  a  victory  of  a  tenv 

210 


THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD  211 

porarily  intense  impulse  over  its  rivals,  a  unity  by  op- 
pression and  suppression,  not  by  coordination.  These 
seeming  unifications  which  are  not  unifications  of  fact 
are  revealed  by  the  event,  by  subsequent  occurrences. 
It  is  one  of  the  penalties  of  evil  choice,  perhaps  the  chief 
penalty,  that  the  wrong-doer  becomes  more  and  more  in- 
capable of  detecting  these  objective  revelations  of 
himself. 

In  quality,  the  good  is  never  twice  alike.  It  never 
copies  itself.  It  is  new  every  morning,  fresh  every 
evening.  It  is  unique  in  its  every  presentation  For  it 
marks  the  resolution  of  a  distinctive  complication  of 
competing  habits  and  impulses  which  can  never  repeat 
itself.  Only  with  a  habit  rigid  to  the  point  of  immo- 
bility could  exactly  the  same  good  recur  twice.  And 
with  such  rigid  routines  the  same  good  does  not  after 
all  recur,  for  it  does  not  even  occur.  There  is  no  con- 
sciousness at  all,  either  of  good  or  bad.  Rigid  habits 
sink  below  the  level  of  any  meaning  at  all.  And  since 
we  live  in  a  moving  world,  they  plunge  us  finally  against 
conditions  to  which  they  are  not  adapted  and  so  ter- 
minate in  disaster. 

To  utilitarianism  with  all  its  defects  belongs  the  dis- 
tinction of  enforcing  in  an  unforgettable  way  the  fact 
that  moral  good,  like  every  good,  consists  in  a  satis- 
faction of  the  forces  of  human  nature,  in  welfare,  hap- 
piness. To  Bentham  remains,  in  spite  of  all  crudities 
and  eccentricities,  the  imperishable  renown  of  forcing 
home  to  the  popular  consciousness  that  "  conscience," 
intelligence  applied  to  in  moral  matters,  is  too  often 


212          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

not  intelligence  but  is  veiled  caprice,  dogmatic  ipse 
dixitism,  vested  class  interest.  It  is  truly  conscience 
only  as  it  contributes  to  relief  of  misery  and  promo- 
tion of  happiness.  An  examination  of  utilitarianism 
brings  out  however  the  catastrophe  involved  in  thinking 
of  the  good  to  which  intelligence  is  pertinent  as  con- 
sisting in  future  pleasures  and  pains,  and  moral  re- 
flection as  their  algebraic  calculus.  It  emphasizes  the 
contrast  between  such  conceptions  of  good  and  of  in- 
telligence, and  the  facts  of  human  nature  according  to 
which  good,  happiness,  is  found  in  the  present  meaning 
of  activity,  depending  upon  the  proportion,  order  and 
freedom  introduced  into  it  by  thought  as  it  discovers 
objects  which  release  and  unify  otherwise  contending 
elements. 

An  adequate  discussion  of  why  utilitarianism  with  its 
just  insight  into  the  central  place  of  good,  and  its 
ardent  devotion  to  rendering  morals  more  intelligent 
and  more  equitably  human  took  its  onesided  course  (and 
thereby  provoked  an  intensified  reaction  to  transcen- 
dental and  dogmatic  morals)  would  take  us  far  afield 
into  social  conditions  and  the  antecedent  history  of 
thought.  We  can  deal  with  only  factor,  the  domination 
of  intellectual  interest  by  economic  considerations.  The 
industrial  revolution  was  bound  in  any  case  to  give  a 
new  direction  to  thought.  It  enforced  liberation  from 
other-worldly  concerns  by  fixing  attention  upon  the 
possibility  of  the  betterment  of  this  world  through  con- 
trol and  utilization  of  natural  forces;  it  opened  up 
marvelous  possibilities  in  industry  and  commerce,  and 


THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD  213 

new  social  conditions  conducive  to  invention,  ingenuity, 
enterprise,  constructive  energy  and  an  impersonal  habit 
of  mind  dealing  with  mechanisms  rather  than  appear- 
ances. But  new  movements  do  not  start  in  a  new  and 
clear  field.  The  context  of  old  institutions  and  corre- 
sponding habits  of  thought  persisted.  The  new  move- 
ment was  perverted  in  theory  because  prior  established 
conditions  deflected  it  in  practice.  Thus  the  new  in- 
dustrialism was  largely  the  old  feudalism,  living  in  a 
bank  instead  of  a  castle  and  brandishing  the  check  of 
credit  instead  of  the  sword. 

An  old  theological  doctrine  of  total  depravity  was 
continued  and  carried  over  in  the  idea  of  an  inherent 
laziness  of  human  nature  which  rendered  it  averse  to 
useful  work,  unless  bribed  by  expectations  of  pleasure, 
or  driven  by  fears  of  pains.  This  being  the  "  incen- 
tive "  to  action,  it  followed  that  the  office  of  reason  is 
only  to  enlighten  the  search  for  good  or  gain  by  insti- 
tuting a  more  exact  calculus  of  profit  and  loss.  Happi- 
ness was  thus  identified  with  a  maximum  net  gain  of 
pleasures  on  the  basis  of  analogy  with  business  con- 
ducted for  pecuniary  profit,  and  directed  by  means  of 
a  science  of  accounting  dealing  with  quantities  of  re- 
ceipts and  expenses  expressed  in  definite  monetary 
units.*  For  business  was  conducted  as  matter  of  fact 
with  primary  reference  to  procuring  gain  and  averting 
loss.  Gain  and  loss  were  reckoned  in  terms  of  units  of 

*I  owe  the  suggestion  of  this  mode  of  interpreting  the 
hedonistic  calculus  of  utilitarianism  to  Dr.  Wesley  Mitchell. 
See  his  articles  in  Journal  of  Political  Economy,  vol.  18.  Com- 
pare also  his  article  in  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  33. 


214          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

money,  assumed  to  be  fixed  and  equal,  exactly  compar- 
able whether  loss  or  gain  occurred,  while  business  fore- 
sight reduced  future  prospects  to  definitely  measured 
forms,  to  dollars  and  cents.  A  dollar  is  a  dollar,  past, 
present  or  future ;  and  every  business  transaction,  every 
expenditure  and  consumption  of  time,  energy,  goods, 
is,  in  theory,  capable  of  exact  statement  in  terms  of 
dollars.  Generalize  this  point  of  view  into  the  notion 
that  gain  is  the  object  of  all  action;  that  gain  takes  the 
form  of  pleasure;  that  there  are  definite,  commensu- 
rable units  of  pleasure,  which  are  exactly  offset  by  units 
of  pain  (loss),  and  the  working  psychology  of  the 
Benthamite  school  is  at  hand. 

Now  admitting  that  the  device  of  money  accounting 
makes  possible  more  exact  estimates  of  the  consequences 
of  many  acts  than  is  otherwise  possible,  and  that  ac- 
cordingly the  use  of  money  and  accounting  may  work  a 
triumph  for  the  application  of  intelligence  in  daily  af- 
fairs, yet  there  exists  a  difference  in  kind  between  busi- 
ness calculation  of  profit  and  loss  and  deliberation  upon 
what  purposes  to  form.  Some  of  these  differences  are 
inherent  and  insuperable.  Others  of  them  are  due  to 
the  nature  of  present  business  conducted  for  pecuniary 
profit,  and  would  disappear  if  business  were  conducted 
primarily  for  service  of  needs.  But  it  is  important  to 
see  how  in  the  latter  case  the  assimilation  of  business 
accounting  and  normal  deliberation  would  occur.  For 
it  would  not  consist  in  making  deliberation  identical 
with  calculation  of  loss  and  gain ;  it  would  proceed  in 
the  opposite  direction.  It  would  make  accounting  and 


THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD  215 

auditing  a  subordinate  factor  in  discovering  the  mean- 
ing of  present  activity.  Calculation  would  be  a  means 
of  stating  future  results  more  exactly  and  objectively 
and  thus  of  making  action  more  humane.  Its  function 
would  be  that  of  statistics  in  all  social  science. 

But  first  as  to  the  inherent  difference  between  de- 
liberation regarding  business  profit  and  loss  and  de- 
liberation about  ordinary  conduct.  The  distinction  be- 
tween wide  and  narrow  use  of  reason  has  already  been 
noted.  The  latter  holds  a  fixed  end  in  view  and  de- 
liberates only  upon  means  of  reaching  it.  The  former 
regards  the  end-in-view  in  deliberation  as  tentative  and 
permits,  nay  encourages  the  coming  into  view  of  con- 
sequences which  will  transform  it  and  create  a  new 
purpose  and  plan.  Now  business  calculation  is  obvi- 
ously of  the  kind  where  the  end  is  taken  for  granted 
and  does  not  enter  into  deliberation.  It  resembles  the 
case  in  which  a  man  has  already  made  his  final  decision, 
say  to  take  a  walk,  and  deliberates  only  upon  what 
walk  to  take.  His  end-in-view  already  exists;  it  is  not 
questioned.  The  question  is  as  to  comparative  advan- 
tages of  this  tramp  or  that.  Deliberation  is  not  free 
but  occurs  within  the  limits  of  a  decision  reached  by 
some  prior  deliberation  or  else  fixed  by  unthinking  rou- 
tine. Suppose,  however,  that  a  man's  question  is  not 
which  path  to  walk  upon,  but  whether  to  walk  or  to 
stay  with  a  friend  whom  continued  confinement  has  ren- 
dered peevish  and  uninteresting  as  a  companion.  The 
utilitarian  theory  demands  that  in  the  latter  case  the 
two  alternatives  still  be  of  the  same  kind,  alike  in  qual- 


216         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ity,  that  their  only  difference  be  a  quantitative  one,  of 
plus  or  minus  in  pleasure.  This  assumption  that  all 
desires  and  dispositions,  all  habits  and  impulses,  are 
the  same  in  quality  is  equivalent  to  the  assertion  that 
no  real  or  significant  conflict  among  them  is  possible; 
and  hence  there  is  no  need  of  discovering  an  object  and 
an  activity  which  will  bring  them  into  unity.  It  asserts 
by  implication  that  there  is  no  genuine  doubt  or  sus- 
pense as  to  the  meaning  of  any  impulse  or  habit.  Their 
meaning  is  ready-made,  fixed:  pleasure.  The  only 
"  problem  "  or  doubt  is  as  to  the  amount  of  pleasure 
(or  pain)  that  is  involved. 

This  assumption  does  violence  to  fact.  The  poign- 
ancy of  situations  that  evoke  reflection  lies  in  the  fact 
that  we  really  do  not  know  the  meaning  of  the  ten- 
dencies that  are  pressing  for  action.  We  have  to 
search,  to  experiment.  Deliberation  is  a  work  of  dis- 
covery. Conflict  is  acute;  one  impulse  carries  us  one 
way  into  one  situation,  and  another  impulse  takes  us 
another  way  to  a  radically  different  objective  result. 
Deliberation  is  not  an  attempt  to  do  away  with  this 
opposition  of  quality  by  reducing  it  to  one  of  amount. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  uncover  the  conflict  in  its  full  scope 
and  bearing.  What  we  want  to  find  out  is  what  differ- 
ence each  impulse  and  habit  imports,  to  reveal  quali- 
tative incompatibilities  by  detecting  the  different 
courses  to  which  they  commit  us,  the  different  dispo- 
sitions they  form  and  foster,  the  different  situations 
into  which  they  plunge  us. 

In  short,  the  thing  actually  at  stake  in  any  serious 


THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD  217 

deliberation  is  not  a  difference  of  quantity,  but  what 
kind  of  person  one  is  to  become,  what  sort  of  aelf  is  in 
the  making,  what  kind  of  a  world  is  making.  This 
is  plain  enough  in  those  crucial  decisions  where  the 
course  of  life  is  thrown  into  widely  different  channels, 
where  the  pattern  of  life  is  rendered  different  and  di- 
versely dyed  according  as  this  alternative  or  that  is 
chosen.  Deliberation  as  to  whether  to  be  a  merchant 
or  a  school  teacher,  a  physician  or  a  politician  is  not  a 
choice  of  quantities.  It  is  just  what  it  appears  to  be, 
a  choice  of  careers  which  are  incompatible  with  one 
another,  within  each  of  which  definitive  inclusions  and 
rejections  are  involved.  With  the  difference  in  career 
belongs  a  difference  in  the  constitution  of  the  self,  of 
habits  of  thought  and  feeling  as  well  as  of  outward 
action.  With  it  comes  profound  differences  in  all  fu- 
ture objective  relationships.  Our  minor  decisions  differ 
in  acuteness  and  range,  but  not  in  principle.  Our  world 
does  not  so  obviously  hang  upon  any  one  of  them ;  but 
put  together  they  make  the  world  what  it  is  in  meaning 
for  each  one  of  us.  Crucial  decisions  can  hardly  be 
more  than  a  disclosure  of  the  cumulative  force  of  trivial 
choices. 

A  radical  distinction  thus  exists  between  deliberation 
where  the  only  question  is  whether  to  invest  money  in 
this  bond  or  that  stock,  and  deliberation  where  the 
primary  decision  is  as  to  the  kind  of  activity  which  is 
to  be  engaged  in.  Definite  quantitative  calculation  is 
possible  in  the  former  case  because  a  decision  as  to  kind 
or  direction  of  action  does  not  have  to  be  made.  It  has 


218          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

been  decided  already,  whether  by  persistence  of  habit, 
or  prior  deliberation,  that  the  man  is  to  be  an  investor. 
The  significant  thing  in  decisions  proper,  the  course 
of  action,  the  kind  of  a  self  simply,  doesn't  enter  in; 
it  isn't  in  question.  To  reduce  all  cases  of  judgment  of 
action  to  this  simplified  and  comparatively  unimpor- 
tant case  of  calculation  of  quantities,  is  to  miss  the 
whole  point  of  deliberation.* 

It  is  another  way  of  saying  the  same  thing  to  note 
that  business  calculations  about  pecuniary  gain  never 
concern  direct  use  in  experience.  They  are,  as  such, 
not  deliberations  about  good  or  satisfaction  at  all.  The 
man  who  decides  to  put  business  activity  before  all  other 
claims  whatsoever,  before  that  of  family  or  country  or 
art  or  science,  does  make  a  choice  about  satisfaction 
or  good.  But  he  makes  it  as  a  man,  not  as  a  business 
man.  On  the  other  hand,  what  is  to  be  done  with  busi- 
ness profit  when  it  accrues  (except  to  invest  it  in  sim- 
ilar undertakings)  does  not  enter  at  all  into  a  strictly 
business  deliberation.  Its  use,  in  which  alone  good  or 
satisfaction  is  found,  is  left  indeterminate,  contingent 
upon  further  deliberation,  or  else  is  left  matter  of  rou- 
tine habit.  We  do  not  eat  money,  or  wear  it,  or  marry 
it,  or  listen  for  musical  strains  to  issue  from  it.  If  by 
any  chance  a  man  prefers  a  less  amount  of  money  to 
a  greater  amount,  it  is  not  for  economic  reasons.  Pe- 
cuniary profit  in  itself,  in  other  words,  is  always  strictly 

*  So  far  as  I  am  aware  Dr.  H.  W.  Stuart  was  the  first  to  point 
out  this  difference  between  economic  and  moral  valuations  in  his 
essay  in  Studies  in  Logical  Theory. 


THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD  219 

instrumental,  and  it  is  of  the  nature  of  this  instrument 
to  be  effective  in  proportion  to  size.  In  choosing  with 
respect  to  it,  we  are  not  making  a  significant  choice, 
a  choice  of  ends. 

We  have  already  seen,  however,  there  is  something 
abnormal  and  in  the  strict  sense  impossible  in  mere 
means,  in,  that  is,  instruments  totally  dissevered  from 
ends.  We  may  view  economic  activity  in  abstraction, 
but  it  does  not  exist  by  itself.  Business  takes  for 
granted  non-business  uses  to  which  its  results  are  to 
be  put.  The  stimuli  for  economic  activity  (in  the  sense 
in  which  business  means  activity  subject  to  monetary 
reckoning)  are  found  in  non-pecuniary,  non-economic 
activities.  Taken  by  itself  then  economic  action  throws 
no  light  upon  the  nature  of  satisfaction  and  the  rela- 
tion of  intelligence  to  it,  because  the  whole  question  of 
satisfaction  is  either  taken  for  granted  or  else  is  ig- 
nored by  it.  Only  when  money-making  is  itself  taken  as 
a  good  does  it  exhibit  anything  pertinent  to  the  ques- 
tion. And  when  it  is  so  taken,  then  the  question  is  not 
one  of  future  gain  but  of  present  activity  and  its  mean- 
ing. Business  then  becomes  an  activity  carried  on  for 
its  own  sake.  It  is  then  a  career,  a  continuous  oc- 
cupation in  which  are  developed  daring,  adventure, 
power,  rivalry,  overcoming  of  competitors,  conspicuous 
achievement  which  attracts  admiration,  play  of  im- 
agination, technical  knowledge,  skill  in  foresight  and 
making  combinations,  management  of  men  and  goods 
and  so  on.  In  this  case,  it  exemplifies  what  has  been 
said  about  good  or  happiness  as  incorporating  in  itself 


220          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

at  present  the  foreseen  future  consequences  that  result 
from  intelligent  action.  The  problem  concerns  the 
quality  of  such  a  good. 

In  short  the  attempt  to  assimilate  other  activities 
to  the  model  of  economic  activity  (defined  as  a  calcu- 
lated pursuit  of  gain)  reverses  the  state  of  the  facts. 
The  "  economic  man  "  defined  as  a  creature  devoted  to 
an  enlightened  or  calculating  pursuit  of  gain  is  mor- 
ally objectionable  because  the  conception  of  such  a  be- 
ing empirically  falsifies  empirical  facts.  Love  of  pe- 
cuniary gain  is  an  undoubted  and  powerful  fact.  But 
it  and  its  importance  are  affairs  of  social  not  of  psy- 
chological nature.  It  is  not  a  primary  fact  which  can 
be  used  to  account  for  other  phenomena.  It  depends 
upon  other  impulses  and  habits.  It  expresses  and  or- 
ganizes the  use  to  which  they  are  put.  It  cannot  be 
used  to  define  the  nature  of  desire,  effort  and  satisfac- 
tion, because  it  embodies  a  socially  selected  type  of  de- 
sire and  satisfaction.  It  affords,  like  steeple-chasing, 
or  collecting  postage  stamps,  seeking  political  office,  as- 
tronomical observation  of  the  heavens,  a  special  case  of 
desire,  effort,  and  happiness.  And  like  them  it  is  sub- 
ject to  examination,  criticism  and  valuation  in  the  light 
of  the  place  it  occupies  in  the  system  of  developing 
activities. 

The  reason  that  it  is  so  easy  and  for  specific  pur- 
poses so  useful  to  select  economic  activities  and  subject 
them  to  separate  scientific  treatment  is  because  the  men 
who  engage  in  it  are  men  who  are  also  more  than  busi- 
ness men,  whose  usual  habits  may  be  more  or  less  safely 


THE  UNIQUENESS  OF  GOOD  221 

guessed  at.  As  human  beings  they  have  desires  and  oc- 
cupations which  are  affected  by  social  custom,  expecta- 
tion and  admiration.  The  uses  to  which  gains  will  be 
put,  that  is  the  current  scheme  of  activities  into  which 
they  enter  as  factors,  are  passed  over  only  because  they 
are  so  inevitably  present.  Support  of  family,  of  church, 
philanthropic  benefactions,  political  influence,  automo- 
biling,  command  of  luxuries,  freedom  of  movement,  re- 
spect from  others,  are  in  general  terms  some  of  the 
obvious  activities  into  which  economic  activity  fits. 
This  context  of  activities  enters  into  the  real  make-up 
and  meaning  of  economic  activity.  Calculated  pursuit 
of  gain  is  in  fact  never  what  it  is  made  out  to  be  when 
economic  action  is  separated  from  the  rest  of  life,  for 
in  fact  it  is  what  it  is  because  of  a  complex  social  en- 
vironment involving  scientific,  legal,  political  and  do- 
mestic conditions. 

A  certain  tragic  fate  seems  to  attend  all  intellectual 
movements.  That  of  utilitarianism  is  suggested  in  the 
not  infrequent  criticism  that  it  exaggerated  the  role  of 
rational  thought  in  human  conduct,  that  it  assumed 
that  everybody  is  moved  by  conscious  considerations 
and  that  all  that  is  really  necessary  is  to  make  the  pro- 
cess of  consideration  sufficiently  enlightened.  Then  it 
is  objected  that  a  better  psychology  reveals  that  men 
are  not  moved  by  thought  but  rather  by  instinct  and 
habit.  Thus  a  partially  sound  criticism  is  employed  to 
conceal  the  one  factor  in  utilitarianism  from  which  we 
ought  to  learn  something ;  is  used  to  foster  an  obscuran- 
tist doctrine  of  trusting  to  impulse,  instinct  or  intui- 


222          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

tion.  Neither  the  utilitarians  nor  any  one  else  can  ex- 
aggerate the  proper  office  of  reflection,  of  intelligence, 
in  conduct.  The  mistake  lay  not  here  but  in  a  false 
conception  of  what  constitutes  reflection,  deliberation. 
The  truth  that  men  are  not  moved  by  consideration  of 
self-interest,  that  men  are  not  good  judges  of  where 
their  interests  lie  and  are  not  moved  to  act  by  these 
judgments,  cannot  properly  be  converted  into  the  belief 
that  consideration  of  consequences  is  &  negligible  factor 
in  conduct.  So  far  as  it  is  negligible  in  fact  it  evinces 
the  rudimentary  character  of  civilization.  We  may 
indeed  safely  start  from  the  assumption  that  impulse 
and  habit,  not  thought,  are  the  primary  determinants 
of  conduct.  But  the  conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  these 
facts  is  that  the  need  is  therefore  the  greater  for  culti- 
vation of  thought.  The  error  of  utilitarianism  is  not 
at  this  point.  It  is  found  in  its  wrong  conception  of 
what  thought,  deliberation,  is  and  does. 


VI 


Our  problem  now  concerns  the  nature  of  ends,  that 
is  ends-in-view  or  aims.  The  essential  elements  in  the 
problem  have  already  been  stated.  It  has  been  pointed 
out  that  the  ends,  objectives,  of  conduct  are  those  fore- 
seen consequences  which  influence  present  deliberation 
and  which  finally  bring  it  to  rest  by  furnishing  an  ade- 
quate stimulus  to  overt  action.  Consequently  ends  arise 
and  function  within  action.  They  are  not,  as  current 
theories  too  often  imply,  things  lying  beyond  activity 
at  which  the  latter  is  directed.  They  are  not  strictly 
speaking  ends  or  termini  of  action  at  all.  They  are 
terminals  of  deliberation,  and  so  turning  points  in  activ- 
ity. Many  opposed  moral  theories  agree  however  in 
placing  ends  beyond  action,  although  they  differ  in 
their  notions  of  what  the  ends  are.  The  utilitarian  sets 
up  pleasure  as  such  an  outside-and-beyond,  as  some- 
thing necessary  to  induce  action  and  in  which  it  termi- 
nates. Many  harsh  critics  of  utilitarianism  have  how- 
ever agreed  that  there  is  some  end  in  which  action  termi- 
nates, a  final  goal.  They  have  denied  that  pleasure  is 
such  an  outside  aim,  and  put  perfection  or  self-realiza- 
tion in  its  place.  The  entire  popular  notion  of 
"  ideals  "  is  infected  with  this  conception  of  some  fixed 
end  beyond  activity  at  which  we  should  aim.  Accord- 
ing to  this  view  ends-in-themselves  come  before  aims. 

223 


224         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

We  have  a  moral  aim  only  as  our  purpose  coincides 
with  some  end-in-itself.  We  ought  to  aim  at  the  latter 
whether  we  actually  do  or  not. 

When  men  believed  that  fixed  ends  existed  for  all 
normal  changes  in  nature,  the  conception  of  similar 
ends  for  men  was  but  a  special  case  of  a  general  belief. 
If  the  changes  in  a  tree  from  acorn  to  full-grown  oak 
were  regulated  by  an  end  which  was  somehow  immanent 
or  potential  in  all  the  less  perfect  forms,  and  if  change 
was  simply  the  effort  to  realize  a  perfect  or  complete 
form,  then  the  acceptance  of  a  like  view  for  human  con- 
duct was  consonant  with  the  rest  of  what  passed  for 
science.  Such  a  view,  consistent  and  systematic,  was 
foisted  by  Aristotle  upon  western  culture  and  endured 
for  two  thousand  years.  When  the  notion  was  expelled 
from  natural  science  by  the  intellectual  revolution  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  logically  it  should  also  have 
disappeared  from  the  theory  of  human  action.  But 
man  is  not  logical  and  his  intellectual  history  is  a  rec- 
ord of  mental  reserves  and  compromises.  He  hangs  on 
to  what  he  can  in  his  old  beliefs  even  when  he  is  com- 
pelled to  surrender  their  logical  basis.  So  the  doctrine 
of  fixed  ends-in-themselves  at  which  human  acts  are — or 
should  be — directed  and  by  which  they  are  regulated 
if  they  are  regulated  at  all  persisted  in  morals,  and  was 
made  the  cornerstone  of  orthodox  moral  theory.  The 
immediate  effect  was  to  dislocate  moral  from  natural 
science,  to  divide  man's  world  as  it  never  had  been  di- 
vided in  prior  culture.  One  point  of  view,  one  method 
and  spirit  animated  inquiry  into  natural  occurrences; 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  225 

a  radically  opposite  set  of  ideas  prevailed  about  man's 
affairs.  Completion  of  the  scientific  change  begun  in 
the  seventeenth  century  thus  depends  upon  a  revision 
of  the  current  notion  of  ends  of  action  as  fixed  limits 
and  conclusions. 

In  fact,  ends  are  ends-in-view  or  aims.  They  arise 
out  of  natural  effects  or  consequences  which  in  the 
beginning  are  hit  upon,  stumbled  upon  so  far  as  any 
purpose  is  concerned.  Men  like  some  of  the  conse- 
quences and  dislike  others.  Henceforth  (or  till  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion  alter)  attaining  or  averting  similar 
consequences  are  aims  or  ends.  These  consequences 
constitute  the  meaning  and  value  of  an  activity  as  it 
comes  under  deliberation.  Meantime  of  course  imagi- 
nation is  busy.  Old  consequences  are  enhanced,  recom- 
bined,  modified  in  imagination.  Invention  operates. 
Actual  consequences,  that  is  effects  which  have  hap- 
pened in  the  past,  become  possible  future  consequences 
of  acts  still  to  be  performed.  This  operation  of  im- 
aginative thought  complicates  the  relation  of  ends  to 
activity,  but  it  does  not  alter  the  substantial  fact :  Ends 
are  foreseen  consequences  which  arise  in  the  course  of 
activity  and  which  are  employed  to  give  activity  added 
meaning  and  to  direct  its  further  course.  They  are  in 
no  sense  ends  of  action.  In  being  ends  of  deliberation 
they  are  redirecting  pivots  in  action. 

Men  shoot  and  throw.  At  first  this  is  done  as  an 
"  instinctive "  or  natural  reaction  to  some  situation. 
The  result  when  it  is  observed  gives  a  new  meaning  to 
the  activity.  Henceforth  men  in  throwing  and  shooting 


226          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

think_of  it  in  terms  of  its  outcome ;  they  act  intelli- 
gently or  have  an  end.  Liking  the  activity  in  its  ac- 
quired meaning,  they  not  only  "  take  ainT^  when"tney 
thrbwjnsteaj^of^thrpwing  at  random,  but  they  find  or 
make  targets  at  which  to  aim.  This  is  the  origin  and 
nature  of  "  goals  "  of  action.  They  are  ways  of  de- 
fining and  deepening  the  meaning^^activity.  Having 
an  end  or  aim  is  thus  a  characteristic  of  jrresent  activ- 
ity. It  is  the  means  by  which  an  activity  becomes 
adapted  when  otherwise  it  would  be  blind  and  disor- 
derly, or  by  which  it  gets  meaning  when  otherwise  it 
would  be  mechanical.  In  a  strict  sense  an  end-in-view 
is  a  means  in  present  actign ;  present  action  is  not  a 
means  to  a  remote  end.  Men  do  not  shoot  because  tar- 
gets exist,  but  they  set  up  targets  in  order  that  throw- 
ing and  shooting  may  be  more  effective  and  significant. 

A  mariner  does  not  sail  towards  the  stars,  but  by 
noting  the  stars  he  is  aided  in  conducting  his  present 
activity  of  sailing.  A  port  or  harbor  is  his  objective, 
but  only  in  the  sense  of  reaching  it  not  of  taking  pos- 
session of  it.  The  harbor  stands  in  his  thought  as  a 
significant  point  at  which  his  activity  will  need  re-direc- 
tion. Activity  will  not  cease  when  the  port  is  attained, 
but  merely  the  present  direction  of  activity.  The  port 
is  as  truly  the  beginning  of  another  mode  of  activity  as 
it  is  the  termination  of  the  present  one.  The  only 
reason  we  ignore  this  fact  is  because  it  is  empirically 
taken  for  granted.  We  know  without  thinking  that  our 
"  ends  "  are  perforce  beginnings.  But  theories  of  ends 
and  ideals  have  converted  a  theoretical  ignoring  which 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  227 

is  equivalent  to  practical  acknowledgment  into  an  in- 
tellectual denial,  and  have  thereby  confused  and  per- 
verted the  nature  of  ends. 

Even  the  most  important  among  all  the  consequences 
of  an  act  is  not  necessarily  its  aim.  Results  which 
are  objectively  most  important  may  not  even  be  thought 
of  at  all ;  ordinarily  a  man  does  not  think  in  connection 
with  exercise  of  his  profession  that  it  will  sustain  him 
and  his  family  in  existence.  The  end-thought-of  is 
uniquely  important,  but  it  is  indispensable  to  state  the 
respect  in  which  it  is  important.  It  gives  the  decisive 
clew  to  the  act  to  be  performed  under  the  existing  cir- 
cumstances. It  is  that  particular  foreseen  object  that 
will  stimulate  the  act  which  relieves  existing  troubles, 
straightens  out  existing  entanglements.  In  a  tempo- 
rary annoyance,  even  if  only  that  caused  by  the  singing 
of  a  mosquito,  the  thought  of  that  which  gives  relief 
may  engross  the  mind  in  spite  of  consequences  much 
more  important,  objectively  speaking.  Moralists  have 
deplored  such  facts  as  evidence  of  levity.  But  the  rem 
edy,  if  a  remedy  be  needed,  is  not  found  in  insisting 
upon  the  importance  of  ends  in  general.  It  is  found  in 
a  change  of  the  dispositions  which  make  things  either 
immediately  troublesome  or  tolerable  or  agreeable. 

When  ends  are  regarded  as  literally  ends  to  action 
rather  than  as  directive  stimuli  to  present  choice  they 
are  frozen  and  isolated.  It  makes  no  difference  whether 
the  "  end  "  is  "  natural  "  good  like  health  or  a  "  moral  " 
good  like  honesty.  Set  up  as  complete  and  exclusive, 
as  demanding  and  justifying  action  as  a  means  to  itself, 


228         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

it  leads  to  narrowness ;  in  extreme  cases  fanaticism,  in- 
considerateness,  arrogance  and  hypocrisy.  Joshua's 
reputed  success  in  getting  the  sun  to  stand  still  to  serve 
his  desire  is  recognized  to  have  involved  a  miracle.  But 
moral  theorists  constantly  assume  that  the  continuous 
course  of  events  can  be  arrested  at  the  point  of  a  par- 
ticular object;  that  men  can  plunge  with  their  own 
desires  into  the  unceasing  flow  of  changes,  and 
seize  upon  some  object  as  their  end  irrespective  of 
everything  else.  The  use  of  intelligence  to  discover  the 
object  that  will  best  operate  as  a  releasing  and  unifying 
stimulus  in  the  existing  situation  is  discounted.  One 
reminds  one's  self  that  one's  end  is  justice  or  charity 
or  professional  achievement  or  putting  over  a  deal  for 
a  needed  public  improvement,  and  further  questionings 
and  qualms  are  stilled. 

It  is  customary  to  suppose  that  such  methods  merely 
ignore  the  question  of  the  morality  of  the  means  which 
are  used  to  secure  the  end  desired.  Common  sense  re- 
volts against  the  maxim,  conveniently  laid  off  upon 
Jesuits  or  other  far-away  people,  that  the  end  justifies 
the  means.  There  is  no  incorrectness  in  saying  that  the 
question  of  means  employed  is  overlooked  in  such  cases. 
But  analysis  would  go  further  if  it  were  also  pointed 
out  that  overlooking  means  is  only  a  device  for  failing 
to  note  those  ends,  or  consequences,  vhich,  if  they  were 
noted  would  be  seen  to  be  so  evil  that  action  would  be 
estopped.  Certainly  nothing  can  justify  or  condemn 
means  except  ends,  results.  But  we  have  to  include 
consequences  impartially.  Even  admitting  that  lying 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  229 

will  save  a  man's  soul,  whatever  that  may  mean,  it 
would  still  be  true  that  lying  will  have  other  conse- 
quences, namely,  the  usual  consequences  that  follow 
from  tampering  with  good  faith  and  that  lead  lying  to 
be  condemned.  It  is  wilful  folly  to  fasten  upon  some 
single  end  or  consequence  which  is  liked,  and  permit 
the  view  of  that  to  blot  from  perception  all  other  un- 
desired  and  undesirable  consequences.  It  is  like  sup- 
posing that  when  a  finger  held  close  to  the  eye  covers 
up  a  distant  mountain  the  finger  is  really  larger  than 
the  mountain.  Not  the  end — in  the  singular — justifies 
the  means ;  for  there  is  no  such  thing  as  the  single  all- 
important  end.  To  suppose  that  there  is  such  an  end 
is  like  working  over  again,  in  behalf  of  our  private 
wishes,  the  miracle  of  Joshua  in  arresting  the  course  of 
nature.  It  is  not  possible  adequately  to  characterize 
the  presumption,  the  falsity  and  the  deliberate  perver- 
sion of  intelligence  involved  in  refusal  to  note  the  plural 
effects  that  flow  from  any  act,  a  refusal  adopted  in 
order  that  we  may  justify  an  act  by  picking  out  that 
one  consequence  which  will  enable  us  to  do  what  we  wish 
to  do  and  for  which  we  feel  the  need  of  justification. 

Yet  this  assumption  is  continually  made.  It  is  made 
by  implication  in  the  current  view  of  purposes  or  ends- 
in-view  as  objects  in  themselves,  instead  of  means  to 
unification  and  liberation  of  present  conflicting,  con- 
fused habits  and  impulses.  There  is  something  almost 
sinister  in  the  desire  to  label  the  doctrine  that  the  end 
justifies  the  means  with  the  name  of  some  one  obnoxious 
school.  Politicians,  especially  if  they  have  to  do  with 


2SO         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

the  foreign  affairs  of  a  nation  and  are  called  states- 
men, almost  uniformly  act  upon  the  doctrine  that  the 
welfare  of  their  own  country  justifies  any  measure  ir- 
respective of  all  the  demoralization  it  works.  Captains 
of  industry,  great  executives  in  all  lines,  usually  work 
upon  this  plan.  But  they  are  not  the  original  offenders 
by  any  means.  Every  man  works  upon  it  so  far  as  he 
permits  himself  to  become  so  absorbed  in  one  aspect  of 
what  he  is  doing  that  he  loses  a  view  of  its  varied  con- 
sequences, hypnotizing  his  attention  by  consideration 
of  just  those  consequences  which  in  the  abstract  are 
desirable  and  slurring  over  other  consequences  equally 
real.  Every  man  works  upon  this  principle  who  be- 
comes over-interested  in  any  cause  or  project,  and  who 
uses  its  desirability  in  the  abstract  to  justify  himself 
in  employing  any  means  that  will  assist  him  in  arriving, 
ignoring  all  the  collateral  "  ends  "  of  his  behavior.  It 
is  frequently  pointed  out  that  there  is  a  type  of  execu- 
tive-man whose  conduct  seems  to  be  as  non-moral  as 
the  action  of  the  forces  of  nature.  We  all  tend  to 
relapse  into  this  non-moral  condition  whenever  we  want 
any  one  thing  intensely.  In  general,  the  identification 
of  the  end  prominent  in  conscious  desire  and  effort  with 
the  end  is  part  of  the  technique  of  avoiding  a  reason- 
able survey  of  consequences.  The  survey  is  avoided 
because  of  a  subconscious  recognition  that  it  would  re- 
veal desire  in  its  true  worth  and  thus  preclude  action  to 
satisfy  it — or  at  all  events  give  us  an  uneasy  conscience 
in  striving  to  realize  it.  Thus  the  doctrine  of  the  iso- 
lated, complete  or  fixed  end  limits  intelligent  examina- 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  231 

tion,  encourages  insincerity,  and  puts  a  pseudo-stamp 
of  moral  justification  upon  success  at  any  price. 

Moralistic  persons  are  given  to  escaping  this  evil 
by  falling  into  another  pit.  They  deny  that  conse- 
quences have  anything  at  all  to  do  with  the  morality 
of  acts.  Not  ends  but  motives  they  say  justify  or  con- 
demn acts.  The  thing  to  do,  accordingly,  is  to  culti- 
vate certain  motives  or  dispositions,  benevolence,  pur- 
ity, love  of  perfection,  loyalty.  The  denial  of  conse- 
quences thus  turns  out  formal,  verbal.  In  reality  a 
consequence  is  set  up  at  which  to  aim,  only  it  is  a  sub- 
jective consequence.  "  Meaning  well  "  is  selected  as  the 
consequence  or  end  to  be  cultivated  at  all  hazards,  an 
end  which  is  all- justify  ing  and  to  which  everything  else 
is  offered  up  in  sacrifice.  The  result  is  a  sentimental 
futile  complacency  rather  than  the  brutal  efficiency  of 
the  executive.  But  the  root  of  both  evils  is  the  same. 
One  man  selects  some  external  consequence,  the  other 
man  a  state  of  internal  feeling,  to  serve  as  the  end.  The 
doctrine  of  meaning  well  as  the  end  is  if  anything  the 
more  contemptible  of  the  two,  for  it  shrinks  from  ac- 
cepting any  responsibility  for  actual  results.  It  is  neg- 
ative, self-protective  and  sloppy.  It  lends  itself  to  com- 
plete self-deception. 

Why  have  men  become  so  attached  to  fixed,  external 
ends?  Why  is  it  not  universally  recognized  that  an  end 
is  a  device  of  intelligence  in  guiding  action,  instrumental 
to  freeing  and  harmonizing  troubled  and  divided  ten- 
dencies '(  The  answer  is  virtually  contained  in  what  was 
earlier  said  about  rigid  habits  and  their  effect  upon  in- 


232         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

telligence.  Ends  are,  in  fact,  literally  endless,  forever 
coming  into  existence  as  new  activities  occasion  new 
consequences.  "  Endless  ends  "  is  a  way  of  saying  that 
there  are  no  ends — that  is  no  fixed  self-enclosed  finali- 
ties. While  however  we  cannot  actually  prevent  change 
from  occurring  we  can  and  do  regard  it  as  evil.  We 
strive  to  retain  action  in  ditches  already  dug.  We  re- 
gard novelties  as  dangerous,  experiments  as  illicit  and 
deviations  as  forbidden.  Fixed  and  separate  ends  re- 
flect a  projection  of  our  own  fixed  and  non-interacting 
compartmental  habits.  We  see  only  consequences  which 
correspond  to  our  habitual  courses.  As  we  have  said, 
men  did  not  begin  to  shoot  because  there  were  ready- 
made  targets  to  aim  at.  They  made  things  into  targets 
by  shooting  at  them,  and  then  made  special  targets  to 
make  shooting  more  significantly  interesting.  But  if 
generation  after  generation  were  shown  targets  they 
had  had  no  part  in  constructing,  if  bows  and  arrows 
were  thrust  into  their  hands,  and  pressure  were  brought 
to  bear  upon  them  to  keep  them  shooting  in  season  and 
out,  some  wearied  soul  would  soon  propound  to  willing 
listeners  the  theory  that  shooting  was  unnatural,  that 
man  was  naturally  wholly  at  rest,  and  that  targets  ex- 
isted in  order  that  men  might  be  forced  to  be  active; 
that  the  duty  of  shooting  and  the  virtue  of  hitting  are 
externally  imposed  and  fostered,  and  that  otherwise 
there  would  be  no  such  thing  as  a  shooting-activity — 
that  is.  morality. 

The  doctrine  of  fixed  ends  not  only  diverts  attention 
from  examination  of  consequences  and  the  intelligent 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  233 

creation  of  purpose,  but,  since  means  and  ends  are  two 
ways  of  regarding  the  same  actuality,  it  also  renders 
men  careless  in  their  inspection  of  existing  conditions. 
An  aim  not  framed  on  the  basis  of  a  survey  of  those 
present  conditions  which  are  to  be  employed  as  means 
of  its  realization  simply  throws  us  back  upon  past  hab- 
its. We  then  do  not  do  what  we  intended  to  do  but 
what  we  have  got  used  to  doing,  or  else  we  thrash  about 
in  a  blind  ineffectual  way.  The  result  is  failure.  Dis- 
couragement follows,  assuaged  perhaps  by  the  thought 
that  in  any  case  the  end  is  too  ideal,  too  noble  and 
remote,  to  be  capable  of  realization.  We  fall  back  on 
the  consoling  thought  that  our  moral  ideals  are  too 
good  for  this  world  and  that  we  must  accustom  our- 
selves to  a  gap  between  aim  and  execution.  Actual 
life  is  then  thought  of  as  a  compromise  with  the  best, 
an  enforced  second  or  third  best,  a  dreary  exile  from 
our  true  home  in  the  ideal,  or  a  temporary  period  of 
troubled  probation  to  be  followed  by  a  period  of  un- 
ending attainment  and  peace.  At  the  same  time,  as  has 
been  repeatedly  pointed  out,  persons  of  a  more  practi- 
cal turn  of  mind  accept  the  world  "  as  it  is,"  that  is  as 
past  customs  have  made  it  to  be,  and  consider  what 
advantages  for  themselves  may  be  extracted  from  it. 
They  form  aims  on  the  basis  of  existing  habits  of  life 
which  may  be  turned  to  their  own  private  account. 
They  employ  intelligence  in  framing  ends  and  selecting 
and  arranging  means.  But  intelligence  is  confined  to 
manipulation ;  it  does  not  extend  to  construction.  It  is 
the  intelligence  of  the  politician,  administrator  and  pro- 


234          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

fessional  executive — the  kind  of  intelligence  which  has 
given  a  bad  meaning  to  a  word  that  ought  to  have  a  fine 
meaning,  opportunism.  For  the  highest  task  of  intelli- 
gence is  to  grasp  and  realize  genuine  opportunity, 
possibility. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  course  of  forming  aims  is  as 
follows.  The  beginning  is  with  a  wish,  an  emotional 
reaction  against  Ih^presenTstate  of  things  and  a  hope 
for  something  different.  Action  fails  to  connect  sat- 
isfactorily with  surrounding  conditions.  Thrown  back 
upon  itself,  it  projects  itself  in  an  imagination  of  a 
scene  which  if  it  were  present  would  afford  satisfaction. 

'his  picture  is  often  called  an  aim,  more  often  an  ideal. 

ut  in  itself  it  is  a  fancy  which  may  be  only  a  phan- 
tasy, a  dream,  a  castle  in  the  air.  In  itself  it  is  a  ro- 
mantic embellishment  of  the  present;  at  its  best  it  is 
material  for  poetry  or  the  novel.  Its  natural  home  is 
not  in  the  future  but  in  the  dim  past  or  in  some  distant 
and  supposedly  better  part  of  the  present  world.  Every 
such  idealized  object  is  suggested  by  something  actually 
experienced,  as  the  flight  of  birds  suggests  the  libera- 
tion of  human  beings  from  the  restrictions  of  slow 
locomotion  on  dull  earth.  It  becomes  an  aim  or  end 
only  when  it  is  worked  out  in  terms  of  concrete  condi- 
tions available  for  its  realization,  that  is  in  terms  of 
"  means," 

This  transformation  depends  upon  study  of  the  con- 
ditions which  generate  or  make  possible  the  fact  ob- 
served to  exist  already.  The  fancy  of  the  delight  of 
moving  at  will  through  the  air  became  an  actuality 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  235 

only  after  men  carefully  studied  the  way  in  which  a  bird 
although  heavier  than  air  actually  sustains  itself  in 
air.  A  fancy  becomes  an  aim,  in  short,  when  some  past 
sequence  of  known  cause-and-effect  is  projected  into  the 
future,  and  when  by  assembling  its  causal  conditions 
we  strive  to  generate  a  like  result.  We  have  to  fall  back 
upon  what  has  already  happened  naturally  without  de- 
sign, and  study  it  to  see  how  it  happened,  which  is  what 
is  meant  by  causation.  This  knowledge  joined  to  wish 
creates  a  purpose.  Many  men  have  doubtless  dreamed 
of  ability  to  have  light  in  darkness  without  the  trouble 
of  oil,  lamps  and  friction.  Glow-worms,  lightning,  the 
sparks  of  cut  electric  conductors  suggest  such  a  pos- 
sibility. But  the  picture  remained  a  dream  until  an 
Edison  studied  all  that  could  be  found  out  about  such 
casual  phenomena  of  light,  and  then  set  to  work  to 
search  out  and  gather  together  the  means  for  reproduc- 
ing their  operation.  The  great  trouble  with  what 
passes  for  moral  ends  and  ideals  is  that  they  do  not 
get  beyond  the  stage  of  fancy  of  something  agreeable 
and  desirable  based  upon  an  emotional  wish ;  very  often, 
at  that,  not  even  an  original  wish,  but  the  wish  of  some 
leader  which  has  been  conventionalized  and  transmitted 
through  channels  of  authority.  Every  gain  in  natural 
science  makes  possible  new  aims.  That  is,  the  discovery 
of  how  things  do  occur  makes  it  possible  to  conceive 
of  their  happening  at  will,  and  gives  us  a  start  on  se- 
lecting and  combining  the  conditions,  the  means,  to 
command  their  happening.  In  technical  matters,  this 
lesson  has  been  fairly  well  learned.  But  in  moral  mat- 


236          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ters,  men  still  largely  neglect  the  need  of  studying  the 
way  in  which  results  similar  to  those  which  we  desire 
actually  happen.  Mechanism  is  despised  as  of  impor- 
tance only  in  low  material  things.  The  consequent 
divorce  of  moral  ends  from  scientific  study  of  natural 
events  renders  the  former  impotent  wishes,  compensa- 
tory dreams  in  consciousness.  In  fact  ends  or 
consequences  are  still  determined  by  fixed  habit  and 
the  force  of  circumstance.  The  evils  of  idle  dream- 
ing and  of  routine  are  experienced  in  conjunction. 
"  Idealism  "  must  indeed  come  first — the  imagination  of 
some  better  state  generated  by  desire.  But  unless  ideals 
are  to  be  dreams  and  idealism  a  synonym  for  roman- 
ticism and  phantasy-building,  there  must  be  a  most 
realistic  study  of  actual  conditions  and  of  the  mode  or 
law  of  natural  events,  in  order  to  give  the  imagined  or 
ideal  object  definite  form  and  solid  substance — to  give 
it,  in  short,  practicality  and  constitute  it  a  working 
end. 

The  acceptance  of  fixed  ends  in  themselves  is  an 
aspect  of  man's  devotion  to  an  ideal  of  certainty.  This 
affection  was  inevitably  cherished  as  long  as  men  be- 
lieved that  the  highest  things  in  physical  nature  are  at 
rest,  and  that  science  is  possible  only  by  grasping  im- 
mutable forms  and  species:  in  other  words,  for  much 
the  greater  part  of  the  intellectual  history  of  mankind. 
Only  reckless  sceptics  would  have  dared  entertain  any 
idea  of  ends  except  as  fixed  in  themselves  as  long 
as  the  whole  structure  of  science  was  erected  upon  the 
immobile.  Behind  however  the  conception  of  fixity 


THE  NATURE  OF  AIMS  237 

whether  in  science  or  morals  lay  adherence  to  certainty 
of  "  truth,"  a  clinging  to  something  fixed,  born  of  fear 
of  the  new  and  of  attachment  to  possessions.  When 
the  classicist  condemns  concession  to  impulse  and  holds 
up  to  admiration  the  patterns  tested  in  tradition,  he 
little  suspects  how  much  he  is  himself  affected  by  un- 
avowed  impulses — timidity  which  makes  him  cling  to 
authority,  conceit  which  moves  him  to  be  himself  the 
authority  who  speaks  in  the  name  of  authority, 
possessive  impulse  which  fears  to  risk  acquisition  in 
new  adventures.  Love  of  certainty  is  a  demand  for 
guarantees  in  advance  of  action.  Ignoring  the  fact 
that  truth  can  be  bought  only  by  the  adventure  of 
experiment,  dogmatism  turns  truth  into  an  insurance 
company.  Fixed  ends  upon  one  side  and  fixed  "  prin- 
ciples " — that  is  authoritative  rules — on  the  other,  are 
props  for  a  feeling  of  safety,  the  refuge  of  the  timid 
and  the  means  by  which  the  bold  prey  upon  the  timid. 


vn 


Intelligence  is  concerned  with  foreseeing  the  future 
so  that  action  may  have  order  and  direction.  It  is  also 
concerned  with  principles  and  criteria  of  judgment. 
The  diffused  or  wide  applicability  of  habits  is  reflected 
in  the  general  character  of  principles:  a  principle  is 
intellectually  what  a  habit  is  for  direct  action.  As 
habits  set  in  grooves  dominate  activity  and  swerve  it 
from  conditions  instead  of  increasing  its  adaptability, 
BO  principles  treated  as  fixed  rules  instead  of  as  helpful 
methods  take  men  away  from  experience.  The  more 
complicated  the  situation,  and  the  less  we  really  know 
about  it,  the  more  insistent  is  the  orthodox  type  of 
moral  theory  upon  the  prior  existence  of  some  fixed 
and  universal  principle  or  law  which  is  to  be  directly 
applied  and  followed.  Ready-made  rules  available  at 
a  moment's  notice  for  settling  any  kind  of  moral  dif- 
ficulty and  resolving  every  species  of  moral  doubt  have 
been  the  chief  object  of  the  ambition  of  moralists.  In 
the  much  less  complicated  and  less  changing  matters  of 
bodily  health  such  pretensions  are  known  as  quackery. 
But  in  morals  a  hankering  for  certainty,  born  of  tim- 
idity and  nourished  by  love  of  authoritative  prestige, 
has  led  to  the  idea  that  absence  of  immutably  fixed  and 
universally  applicable  ready-made  principles  is  equiv- 
alent to  moral  chaos. 

238 


THE  NATURE  OF  PRINCIPLES  239 

In  fact,  situations  into  which  change  and  the  unex- 
pected enter  are  a  challenge  to  intelligence  to  create 
new  principles.  Morals  must  be  a  growing  science  if 
it  is  to  be  a  science  at  all,  not  merely  because  all  truth 
has  not  yet  been  appropriated  by  the  mind  of  man,  but 
because  life  is  a  moving  affair  in  which  old  moral  truth 
ceases  to  apply.  Principles  are  methods  of  inquiry  and 
forecast  which  require  verification  by  the  event ;  and  the 
time  honored  effort  to  assimilate  morals  to  mathematics 
is  only  a  way  of  bolstering  up  an  old  dogmatic  author- 
ity, or  putting  a  new  one  upon  the  throne  of  the  old. 
But  the  experimental  character  of  moral  judgments 
does  not  mean  complete  uncertainty  and  fluidity.  Prin- 
ciples exist  as  hypotheses  with  which  to  experiment. 
Human  history  is  long.  There  is  a  long  record  of  past 
experimentation  in  conduct,  and  there  are  cumulative 
verifications  which  give  many  principles  a  well  earned 
prestige.  Lightly  to  disregard  them  is  the  height  of 
foolishness.  But  social  situations  alter;  and  it  is  also 
foolish  not  to  observe  how  old  principles  actually  work 
under  new  conditions,  and  not  to  modify  them  so  that 
they  will  be  more  effectual  instruments  in  judging  new 
cases.  Many  men  are  now  aware  of  the  harm  done  in 
legal  matters  by  assuming  the  antecedent  existence  of 
fixed  principles  under  which  every  new  case  may  be 
brought.  They  recognize  that  this  assumption  merely 
puts  an  artificial  premium  on  ideas  developed  under  by- 
gone conditions,  and  that  their  perpetuation  in  the 
present  works  inequity.  Yet  the  choice  is  not  between 
throwing  away  rules  previously  developed  and  sticking 


240          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

obstinately  by  them.  The  intelligent  alternative  is  to 
revise,  adapt,  expand  and  alter  them.  The  problem  is 
one  of  continuous,  vital  readaptation. 

The  popular  objection  to  casuistry  is  similar  to  the 
popular  objection  to  the  maxim  that  the  end  justifies 
the  means.  It  is  creditable  to  practical  moral  sense, 
.but  not  to  popular  logical  consistency.  For  recourse 
to  casuistry  is  the  only  conclusion  which  can  be  drawn 
from  belief  in  fixed  universal  principles,  just  as  the 
Jesuit  maxim  is  the  only  conclusion  proper  to  be  drawn 
from  belief  in  fixed  ends.  Every  act,  every  deed  is  in- 
dividual. What  is  the  sense  in  having  fixed  general 
rules,  commandments,  laws,  unless  they  are  such  as  to 
confer  upon  individual  cases  of  action  (where  alone  in- 
struction is  finally  needed)  something  of  their  own  in- 
fallible certainty?  Casuistry,  so-called,  is  simply  the 
systematic  effort  to  secure  for  particular  instances  of 
conduct  the  advantage  of  general  rules  which  are  as- 
serted and  believed  in.  By  those  who  accept  the  notion 
of  immutable  regulating  principles,  casuistry  ought  to 
be  lauded  for  sincerity  and  helpfulness,  not  dispraised 
as  it  usually  is.  Or  else  men  ought  to  carry  back  their 
aversion  to  manipulation  of  particular  cases,  until  they 
will  fit  into  the  procrustean  beds  of  fixed  rules,  to  the 
point  where  it  is  clear  that  all  principles  are  empirical 
generalizations  from  the  ways  in  which  previous  judg- 
ments of  conduct  have  practically  worked  out.  When 
this  fact  is  apparent,  these  generalizations  will  be  seen 
to  be  not  fixed  rules  for  deciding  doubtful  cases,  but 
instrumentalities  for  their  investigation,  methods  by 


THE  NATURE  OF  PRINCIPLES  241 

which  the  net  value  of  past  experience  is  rendered  avail- 
able for  present  scrutiny  of  new  perplexities.  Then  it 
will  also  follow  that  they  are  hypotheses  to  be  tested 
and  revised  by  their  further  working.* 

Every  such  statement  meets  with  prompt  objection. 
We  are  told  that  in  deliberation  rival  goods  present 
themselves.  We  are  faced  by  competing  desires  and 
ends  which  are  incompatible  with  one  another.  They 
are  all  attractive,  seductive.  How  then  shall  we  choose 
among  them?  We  can  choose  rationally  among  values, 
the  argument  continues,  only  if  we  have  some  fixed 
measure  of  values,  just  as  we  decide  the  respective 
lengths  of  physical  things  by  recourse  to  the  -fixed  foot- 
rule.  One  might  reply  that  after  all  there  is  no  fixed 
foot-rule,  no  fixed  foot  "  in  itself  "  and  that  the  stand- 
ard length  or  weight  of  measure  is  only  another  special 
portion  of  matter,  subject  to  change  from  heat,  mois- 
ture and  gravitational  position,  defined  only  by  condi- 
tions, relations.  One  might  reply  that  the  foot-rule  is 
a  tool  which  has  been  worked  out  in  actual  prior  com- 
parisons of  concrete  things  for  use  in  facilitating  fur- 
ther comparisons.  But  we  content  ourselves  with  re- 
marking that  we  find  in  this  conception  of  a  fixed  ante- 
cedent standard  another  manifestation  of  the  desire  to 
escape  the  strain  of  the  actual  moral  situation,  its 
genuine  uncertainty  of  possibilities  and  consequences. 

*  Among  contemporary  moralists,  Mr.  G.  E.  Moore  may  be 
cited  as  almost  alone  in  having  the  courage  of  the  convictions 
shared  by  many.  He  insists  that  it  is  the  true  business  of  moral 
theory  to  enable  men  to  arrive  at  precise  and  sure  judgments  in 
concrete  cases  of  moral  perplexity. 


242          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

We  are  confronted  with  another  case  of  the  all  too 
human  love  of  certainty,  a  case  of  the  wish  for  an  intel- 
lectual patent  issued  by  authority.  The  issue  after  all 
is  one  of  fact.  The  critic  is  not  entitled  to  enforce 
against  the  facts  his  private  wish  for  a  ready-made 
standard  which  will  relieve  him  from  the  burden  of  ex- 
amination, observation  and  continuing  generalization 
and  test. 

The  worth  of  this  private  wish  is  moreover  open  to 
question  in  the  light  of  the  history  of  the  development 
of  natural  science.  There  was  a  time  when  in  astron- 
omy, chemistry  and  biology  men  claimed  that  judgment 
of  individual  phenomena  was  possible  only  because  the 
mind  was  already  in  possession  of  fixed  truths,  univer- 
sal principles,  pre-ordained  axioms.  Only  by  their 
means  could  contingent,  varying  particular  events  be 
truly  known.  There  was,  it  was  argued,  no  way  to 
judge  the  truth  of  any  particular  statement  about  a 
particular  plant,  heavenly  body,  or  case  of  combustion 
unless  there  was  a  general  truth  already  in  hand  with 
which  to  compare  a  particular  empirical  occurrence. 
The  contention  was  successful,  that  is  for  a  long  time 
it  maintained  its  hold  upon  men's  minds.  But  its  ef- 
fect was  merely  to  encourage  intellectual  laziness,  re- 
liance upon  authority  and  blind  acceptance  of  concep- 
tions that  had  somehow  become  traditional.  The  ac- 
tual advance  of  science  did  not  begin  till  men  broke 
away  from  this  method.  When  men  insisted  upon  judg- 
ing astronomical  phenomena  by  bringing  them  directly 
under  established  truths,  those  of  geometry,  they  had 


THE  NATURE  OF  PRINCIPLES  243 

no  astronomy,  but  only  a  private  esthetic  construction. 
Astronomy  began  when  men  trusted  themselves  to  em- 
barking upon  the  uncertain  sea  of  events  and  were  will- 
ing to  be  instructed  by  changes  in  the  concrete.  Then 
antecedent  principles  were  tentatively  employed  as 
methods  for  conducting  observations  and  experiments, 
and  for  organizing  special  facts:  as  hypotheses. 

In  morals  now,  as  in  physical  science  then,  the  work 
of  intelligence  in  reaching  such  relative  certainty,  or 
tested  probability,  as  is  open  to  man  is  retarded  by  the 
false  notion  of  fixed  antecedent  truths.  Prejudice  is 
confirmed.  Rules  formed  accidentally  or  under  the 
pressure  of  conditions  long  past,  are  protected  from 
criticism  and  thus  perpetuated.  Every  group  and  per- 
son vested  with  authority  strengthens  possessed  power 
by  harping  upon  the  sacredness  of  immutable  principle. 
Moral  facts,  that  is  the  concrete  careers  of  special 
courses  of  action,  are  not  studied.  There  is  no  counter- 
part to  clinical  medicine.  Rigid  classifications  forced 
upon  facts  are  relied  upon.  And  all  is  done,  as  it  used 
to  be  done  in  natural  science,  in  praise  of  Reason  and 
in  fear  of  the  variety  and  fluctuation  of  actual 
happenings. 

The  hypothesis  that  each  moral  situation  is  unique 
and  that  consequently  general  moral  principles  are  in- 
strumental to  developing  the  individualized  meaning  of 
situations  is  declared  to  be  anarchic.  It  is  said  to  be 
ethical  atomism,  pulverizing  the  order  and  dignity  of 
morals.  The  question,  again  is  not  what  our  inherited 
habits  lead  us  to  prefer,  but  where  the  facts  take  us. 


244          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

But  in  this  instance  the  facts  do  not  take  us  into  atom- 
ism and  anarchy.  These  things  are  specters  seen  by  the 
critic  when  he  is  suddenly  confused  by  the  loss  of  cus- 
tomary spectacles.  He  takes  his  own  confusion  due  to 
loss  of  artificial  aids  for  an  objective  situation.  Be- 
cause situations  in  which  deliberation  is  evoked  are  new, 
and  therefore  unique,  general  principles  are  needed. 
Only  an  uncritical  vagueness  will  assume  that  the  sole 
alternative  to  fixed  generality  is  absence  of  continuity. 
Rigid  habits  insist  upon  duplication,  repetition,  recur- 
rence ;  in  their  case  there  is  accordingly  fixed  principles. 
Only  there  is  no  principle  at  all,  that  is,  no  conscious 
intellectual  rule,  for  thought  is  not  needed.  But  all 
habit  has  continuity,  and  while  a  flexible  habit  does  not 
secure  in  its  operation  bare  recurrence  nor  absolute  as- 
surance neither  does  it  plunge  us  into  the  hopeless  con- 
fusion of  the  absolutely  different.  To  insist  upon 
change  and  the  new  is  to  insist  upon  alteration  of  the 
old.  In  denying  that  the  meaning  of  any  genuine  case 
of  deliberation  can  be  exhausted  by  treating  it  as  a 
mere  case  of  an  established  classification  the  value  of 
classification  is  not  denied.  It  is  shown  where  its  value 
lies,  namely,  in  directing  attention  to  resemblances  and 
differences  in  the  new  case,  in  economizing  effort  in  fore- 
sight. To  call  a  generalization  a  tool  is  not  to  say  it  is 
useless;  the  contrary  is  patently  the  case.  A  tool  is 
something  to  use.  Hence  it  is  also  something  to  be  im- 
proved by  noting  how  it  works.  The  need  of  such  not- 
ing and  improving  is  indispensable  if,  as  is  the  ease  with 
moral  principles,  the  tool  has  to  be  used  in  unwonted 


THE  NATURE  OF  PRINCIPLES  245 

circumstances.  Continuity  of  growth  not  atomism  is 
thus  the  alternative  to  fixity  of  principles  and  aims. 
This  is  no  Bergsonian  plea  for  dividing  the  universe 
into  two  portions,  one  all  of  fixed,  recurrent  habits,  and 
the  other  all  spontaneity  of  flux.  Only  in  such  a  uni- 
verse would  reason  in  morals  have  to  take  its  choice  be- 
tween absolute  fixity  and  absolute  looseness. 

Nothing  is  more  instructive  about  the  genuine  value 
of  generalization  in  conduct  than  the  errors  of  Kant. 
He  took  the  doctrine  that  the  essence  of  reason  is  com- 
plete universality  (and  hence  necessity  and  immuta- 
bility), with  the  seriousness  becoming  the  professor  of 
logic.  Applying  the  doctrine  to  morality  he  saw  that 
this  conception  severed  morals  from  connection  with 
experience.  Other  moralists  had  gone  that  far  before 
his  day.  But  none  of  them  had  done  what  Kant  pro- 
ceeded to  do :  carry  this  separation  of  moral  principles 
and  ideals  from  experience  to  its  logical  conclusion. 
He  saw  that  to  exclude  from  principles  all 
connection  with  empirical  details  meant  to  ex- 
clude all  reference  of  any  kind  to  consequences. 
He  then  saw  with  a  clearness  which  does  his 
logic  credit  that  with  such  exclusion,  reason  becomes 
entirely  empty:  nothing  is  left  except  the  universality 
of  the  universal.  He  was  then  confronted  by  the  seem- 
ingly insoluble  problem  of  getting  moral  instruction  re- 
garding special  cases  out  of  a  principle  that  having 
forsworn  intercourse  with  experience  was  barren  and 
empty.  His  ingenious  method  was  as  follows.  Formal 
universality  means  at  least  logical  identity;  it  means 


246         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

self-consistency  or  absence  of  contradiction.  Hence 
follows  the  method  by  which  a  would-be  truly  moral 
agent  will  proceed  in  judging  the  Tightness  of  any  pro- 
posed act.  He  will  ask:  Can  its  motive  be  made  uni- 
versal for  all  cases?  How  would  one  like  it  if  by  one's 
act  one's  motive  in  that  act  were  to  be  erected  into  a 
universal  law  of  actual  nature?  Would  one  then  be 
willing  to  make  the  same  choice? 

Surely  a  man  would  hesitate  to  steal  if  by  his  choice 
to  make  stealing  the  motive  of  his  act  he  were  also  to 
erect  it  into  such  a  fixed  law  of  nature  that  henceforth 
he  and  everybody  else  would  always  steal  whenever 
property  was  in  question.  No  stealing  without  prop- 
erty, and  with  universal  stealing  also  no  property;  a 
clear  self-contradiction.  Looked  at  in  the  light  of 
reason  every  mean,  insincere,  inconsiderate  motive  of 
action  shrivels  into  a  private  exception  which  a  person 
wants  to  take  advantage  of  in  his  own  favor,  and  which 
he  would  be  horrified  to  have  others  act  upon.  It  vio- 
lates the  great  principle  of  logic  that  A  is  A.  Kindly, 
decent  acts,  on  the  contrary,  extend  and  multiply 
themselves  in  a  continuing  harmony. 

This  treatment  by  Kant  evinces  deep  insight  into 
the  office  of  intelligence  and  principle  in  conduct.  But 
it  involves  flat  contradiction  of  Kant's  own  original 
intention  to  exclude  consideration  of  concrete  conse- 
quences. It  turns  out  to  be  a  method  of  recommending 
a  broad  impartial  view  of  consequences.  Our  forecast 
of  consequences  is  always  subject,  as  we  have  noted,  to 
the  bias  of  impulse  and  habit.  We  see  what  we  want  to 


THE  NATURE  OF  PRINCIPLES  247 

see,  we  obscure  what  is  unfavorable  to  a  cherished,  prob- 
ably unavowed,  wish.  We  dwell  upon  favoring  circum- 
stances till  they  become  weighted  with  reinforcing  con- 
siderations. We  don't  give  opposing  consequences  half 
a  chance  to  develop  in  thought.  Deliberation  needs 
every  possible  help  it  can  get  against  the  twisting,  ex- 
aggerating and  slighting  tendency  of  passion  and  habit. 
To  form  the  habit  of  asking  how  we  should  be  willing 
to  be  treated  in  a  similar  case — which  is  what  Kant's 
maxim  amounts  to — is  to  gain  an  ally  for  impartial  and 
sincere  deliberation  and  judgment.  It  is  a  safeguard 
against  our  tendency  to  regard  our  own  case  as  excep- 
tional in  comparison  with  the  case  of  others.  "  Just 
this  once,"  a  plea  for  isolation;  secrecy — a  plea  for 
non-inspection,  are  forces  which  operate  in  every  pas- 
sionate desire.  Demand  for  consistency,  for  "  univer- 
sality," far  from  implying  a  rejection  of  all  conse- 
quences, is  a  demand  to  survey  consequences  broadly, 
to  link  effect  to  effect  in  a  chain  of  continuity.  What- 
ever force  works  to  this  end  is  reason.  For  reason,  let 
it  be  repeated  is  an  outcome,  a  function,  not  a  primitive 
force.  What  we  need  are  those  habits,  dispositions 
which  lead  to  impartial  and  consistent  foresight  of  con- 
sequences. Then  our  judgments  are  reasonable;  we  are 
then  reasonable  creatures. 


vni 

Certain  critics  in  sympathy  with  at  least  the  negative 
contention,  the  critical  side,  of  such  a  theory  as  has 
been  advanced,  regard  it  as  placing  too  much  emphasis 
upon  intelligence.  They  find  it  intellectualistic,  cold- 
blooded. They  say  we  must  change  desire,  love,  aspira- 
tion, admiration,  and  then  action  will  be  transformed. 
A  new  affection,  a  changed  appreciation,  brings  with  it 
a  revaluation  of  life  and  insists  upon  its  realization.  A 
refinement  of  intellect  at  most  only  figures  out  better 
ways  of  reaching  old  and  accustomed  ends.  In  fact  we 
are  lucky  if  intellect  does  not  freeze  the  ardor  gfcffin- 
erous  desire  and  paralyze  creative  endeavor.  Intellect 
is  critical^  unproductive  while  desire  is  generative.  In 
its  dispassionateness  intellect  is  aloof  from  humanity 
and  its  needs.  It  fosters  detachment  where  sympathy 
is  needed.  It  cultivates  contemplation  when  salvation 
lies  in  liberating  desire.  Intellect  is  analytic,  taking 
things  to  pieces ;  its  devices  are  the  scalpel  and  test- 
tube.  Affection  is  synthetic,  unifying.  This  argument 
affords  an  opportunity  for  making  more  explicit  those 
respective  offices  of  wish  ami  thought,  in  forming  ends 
which  have  already  been  touched  upon. 

First  we  must  undertake  an  independent  analysis 
of  desire.  It  is  customary  to  describe  desires  in  terms 
of  their  objects,  meaning  by  objects  the  things  which 

248 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  249 

figure  as  in  imagination  their  goals.  As  the  object  is 
noble  or  base,  so,  it  is  thought,  is  desire.  In  any  case, 
emotions  rise  and  cluster  about  the  object.  This  stands 
out  so  conspicuously  in  immediate  experience  that  it 
monopolizes  the  central  position  in  the  traditional  psy- 
chological theory  of  desire.  Barring  gross  self-decep- 
tion or  the  frustration  of  external  circumstance,  the 
outcome,  or  end-result,  of  desire  is  regarded  by  this 
theory  as  similar  to  the  end-in-view  oriob.j  ect  con- 
sciously desired.  Such,  however,  is  not  the  case,  as 
readily  appears  from  the  analysis  of  deliberation.  In 
saying  that  the  actual  outcome  of  desire  is  different  in 
kind  from  the  object  upon  which  desire  consciously 
fastens,  I  do  not  mean  to  repeat  the  old  complaint 
about  the  fallibility  and  feebleness  of  mortals  in  virtue 
of  which  man's  hopes  are  frustrated  and  twisted  in  real- 
ization. The  difference  is  one  of  diverse  dimensions, 
not  of  degree  or  amount. 

The  object  desired  and  the  attainment  of  desire  are 
no  more  alike  than  a  signboard  on  the  road  is  like  the 
garage  to  which  it  points  and  which  it  recommends  to 
the  traveler.  Desire  is  the  forward  urge  of  living  crea- 
tures.  When  the  push  and  drive  of  life  meets  no  ob^_ 
stable,  there  is  nothing  which  we  call  desire.  There  is 
just  life-activity.  But  obstructions  present  themselves, 
and  activity  is  dispersed  and  divided.  Desire  is  the  out- 
come. It  is  activity  surging  forward  to  break  through 
what  dams  it  up.  The  "  object  "  which  then  presents 
itself  in  thought  as  the  goal  of  desire  is  the  object  of 
the  environment  which,  if  it  were  present,  would  secure 


250         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

a  re-unification  of  activity  and  the  restoration  of  its 
ongoing  unity.  The  end-in-view  of  desire  is  that  object 
which  were  it  present  would  link  into  an  organized 
whole  activities  which  are  now  partial  and  competing. 
It  is  no  more  like  the  actual  end  of  desire,  or  the 
resulting  state  attained,  than  the  coupling  of  cars 
which  have  been  separated  is  like  an  ongoing  single 
train.  Yet  the  train  cannot  go  on  without  the  coupling. 
Such  statements  may  seem  contrary  to  common  sense. 
The  pertinency  of  the  illustration  used  will  be  denied. 
No  man  desires  the  signboard  which  he  sees,  he  desires 
the  garage,  the  objective,  the  ulterior  thing.  But  does 
he?  Or  is  the  garage  simply  a  means  by  which  a  divided 
body  of  activities  is  redintegrated  or  coordinated? 
Is  it  desired  in  any  sense  for  itself,  or  only  because  it  is 
the  means  of  effective  adjustment  of  a  whole  set  of  un- 
derlying habits?  While  common  sense  responds  to  the 
ordinary  statement  of  the  end  of  desire,  it  also  re- 
sponds to  a  statement  that  no  one  desires  the  object 
for  its  own  sake,  but  only  for  what  can  be  got  out  of  it. 
Here  is  just  the  point  at  which  the  theory  that  pleasure 
is  the  real  objective  of  desire  makes  its  appeal.  It 
points  out  that  not  the  physical  object  nor  even  its 
possession  is  really  wanted ;  that  they  are  only  means 
to  something  personal  and  experiential.  And  hence  it 
is  argued  that  they  are  means  to  pleasure.  The  pres- 
ent hypothesis  offers  an  alternative:  it  says  that  they 
//are  means  of  removal  of  obstructions  to  an  ongoing, 
//unified  system  of  activities.  It  is  easy  to  see  why  an 
objective  looms  so  large  and  why  emotional  surge 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  251 

and  stress  gather  about  it  and  lift  it  high  above  the 
floor  of  consciousness.  The  objective  is  (or  is  taken  to 
be)  the  key  to  the  situation.  If  we  can  attain  it,  lay 
hold  of  it,  the  trick  is  turned.  It  is  like  the  piece  of 
paper  which  carries  the  reprieve  a  condemned  man 
waits  for.  Issues  of  life  hang  upon  it.  The  desired  ob- 
ject is  in  no  sense  the  end  or  goal  of  desire,  but  it  is 
the  sine  qua  non  of  that  end.  A  practical  man  will  fix 
his  attention  upon  it,  and  not  dream  about  eventuali- 
ties which  are  only  dreams  if  the  objective  is  not  at- 
tained, but  which  will  follow  in  their  own  natural  course 
if  it  is  reached.  For  then  it  becomes  a  factor  in  the 
system  of  activities.  Hence  the  truth  in  the  various  so- 
called  paradoxes  of  desire.  If  pleasure  or  perfection 
were  the  true  end  of  desire,  it  would  still  be  true  that 
the  way  to  attainment  is  not  to  think  of  them.  For 
object  thought  of  and  object  achieved  exist  in  different 
dimensions. 

In  addition  to  the  popular  notions  that  either  the  ob- 
ject in  view  or  else  pleasure  is  the  end  of  desire,  there 
is  a  less  popular  theory  that  quiescence  is  the  actual 
outcome  or  true  terminal  of  desire.  The  theory  finds 
its  most  complete  practical  statement  in  Buddhism.  It 
is  nearer  the  psychological  truth  than  either  of  the 
other  notions.  15  ut  it  views  the  attained  outcome  sim- 
ply in  its  negative  aspect.  The  end  reached  quiets  the 
clash  and  removes  the  discomfort  attendant  upon  di- 
vided and  obstructed  activity.  The  uneasiness,  unrest, 
characteristic  of  desire  is  put  to  sleep.  For  this  reason, 
some  persons  resort  to  intoxicants  and  anodynes.  If 


252          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

quiescence  were  the  end  and  it  could  be  perpetuated, 
this  way  of  removing  disagreeable  uneasiness  would  be 
as  satisfactory  a  way  out  as  the  way  of  objective  effort. 
But  in  fact  Hesire  satjsfied_does  notjjring  quiescence 
unqualifiedly,  but  that  kind  of  quiescence  which  marks 
the  recovery  of  unified  activity:  the  Absence  of  internal 
strifeamong  habits  and  instincts.  Equilibration  of  ac- 
tivities ra/Eher  Than  quiescence  is  the  actual  result  of 
eatisfied  desire.  This  names  the  outcome  positively, 
rather  than  comparatively  and  negatively. 

This  disparity  of  dimensions  in  desire  between  the 
object  thought  of  and  the  outcome  reached  is  the  ex- 
planation of  those  self-deceptions  which  psycho-analy- 
sis has  brought  home  to  us  so  forcibly,  but  of  which  it 
gives  elaborately  cumbrous  accounts.  The  object 
thought  of  and  the  outcome  never  agree.  There  is  no 
self-deceit  in  this  fact.  What,  then,  really  happens 
when  the  actual  outcome  of  satisfied  revenge  figures  in 
thought  as  virtuous  eagerness  for  justice?  Or  when 
the  tickled  vanity  of  social  admiration  is  masked  as 
pure  love  of  learning?  The  trouble  lies  in  the  refusal 
of  a  person  to  note  the  quality  of  the  outcome,  not  in 
the  unavoidable  disparity  of  desire's  object  and  the  out- 
come. The  honest  or  integral  mind  attends  to  the  re- 
sult, and  sees  what  it  really  is.  For  no  terminal  con- 
dition is  exclusively  terminal.  Since  it  exists  in  time  it 
has  consequences  as  well  as  antecedents.  In  being  a 
consummation  it  is  also  a  force  having  causal  poten- 
tialities. It  is  initial  as  well  as  terminal. 

Self-deception  originates,  in  looking  at  an  outcome  in 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  253 

one  direction  only — as  a  satisfaction  of  what  has  gone 
before,  ignoring  the  fact  that  what  is  attained  is  a  state 
of  habits  which  will  continue  in  action  and  which  will 
determine  future  results.  Outcomes  of  desire  are  also 
beginnings  of  new  acts  and  hence  are  portentous.  Sat- 
isfied revenge  may  feel  like  justice  vindicated;  the 
prestige  of  learning  may  feel  like  an  enlargement  and 
rectification  of  an  objective  outlook.  But  since  dif- 
ferent instincts  and  habits  have  entered  into  them,  they 
are  actually,  that  is  dynamically,  unlike.  The  function 
of  moral  judgment  is  to  detect  this  unlikeness.  Here, 
again,  the  belief  that  we  can  know  ourselves  immediately 
is  as  disastrous  to  moral  science  as  the  corresponding 
idea  regarding  knowledge  of  nature  was  to  physical 
science.  Obnoxious  "  subjectivity  "  of  moral  judgment 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  immediate  or  esthetic  quality 
swells  and  swells  and  displaces  the  thought  of  the  active 
potency  which  gives  activity  its  moral  quality, 

We  are  all  natural  Jack  Homers.  If  the  plum  comes 
when  we  put  in  and  pull  out  our  thumb  we  attribute 
the  satisfactory  result  to  personal  virtue.  The  plum 
is  obtained,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  distinguish  obtaining 
from  attaining,  acquisition  from  achieving.  Jack  Hor- 
tier,  Esq.,  put  forth  some  effort;  and  results  and  efforts 
are  always  more  or  less  incommensurate.  For  the 
result  is  always  dependent  to  some  extent  upon  the 
favor  or  disfavor  of  circumstance.  Why  then  should 
not  the  satisfactory  plum  shed  its  halo  retrospectively 
upon  what  precedes  and  be  taken  as  a  sign  of  virtue? 
In  this  way  heroes  and  leaders  are  constructed.  Such 


254          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

is  the  worship  of  success.  And  the  evil  of  success- 
worship  is  precisely  the  evil  with  which  we  have  been 
dealing.  "  Success  "  is  never  merely  final  or  terminal. 
Something  else  succeeds  it,  and  its  successors  are  influ- 
enced by  its  nature,  that  is  by  the  persisting  habits 
and  impulses  that  enter  into  it.  The  world  does  not 
stop  when  the  successful  person  pulls  out  his  plum; 
nor  does  he  stop,  and  the  kind  of  success  he  obtains, 
and  his  attitude  toward  it,  is  a  factor  in  what  comes 
afterwards.  By  a  strange  turn  of  the  wheel,  the  suc- 
cess of  the  ultra-practical  man  is  psychologically  like 
the  refined  enjoyment  of  the  ultra-esthetic  person.  Both 
ignore  the  eventualities  with  which  every  state  of  ex- 
perience is  charged.  There  is  no  reason  for  not  enjoy- 
ing the  present,  but  there  is  every  reason  for  examina- 
tion of  the  objective  factors  of  what  is  enjoyed  before 
we  translate  enjoyment  into  a  belief  in  excellence. 
There  is  every  reason  in  other  words  for  cultivating  an- 
other enjoyment,  that  of  the  habit  of  examining  the 
productive  potentialities  of  the  objects  enjoyed. 

Analysis  of  desire  thus  reveals  the  falsity  of  theories 

f  intelligence^  Im- 


pulse is  primary  and  intelligence  is  secondary  and  in 
some  sense  derivative.  There  should  be  no  blinking  of 
this  fact.  But  recognition  of  it  as  a  fact  exalts  in- 
telligence. For  thought  is  not  the  slave  of  impulse  to 
do  its  bidding.  Impulse  does  not  know  what  it  is  after  ; 
it  cannot  give  orders,  not  even  if  it  wants  to.  It  rushes 
blindly  into  any  opening  it  chances  to  find.  Anything 
that  expends  it,  satisfies  it.  One  outlet  is  like  another 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  255 

to  it.  It  is  indiscriminate.  Its  vagaries  and  excesses 
are  the  stock  theme  of  classical  moralists;  and  while 
they  point  the  wrong  moral  in  urging  the  abdication 
of  impulse  in  favor  of  reason,  their  characterization  of 
impulse  is  not  wholly  wrong.  What  intelligence  has  to 
do  in  the  service  of  impulse  is  to  act  not  as  its  obedient 
servant  but  as  its  clarifier  and  liberator.  And  this  can 
be  accomplished  only  by  a  study  of  the  conditions  and 
causes,  the  workings  and  consequences  of  the  greatest 
possible  variety  of  desires  and  combinations  of  desire. 
Intelligence  converts  desire  into  plans,  systematic  plans 
based  on  assembling  facts,  reporting  events  as  they  hap- 
pen, keeping  tab  on  them  and  analyzing  them. 

Nothing  is  so  easy  to  Tool  as  impulse  and  no  one  is 
deceived  so  readily  as  a  person  under  strong  emotion. 
Hence  the  idealism  of  man  is  easily  brought  to  naught. 
Generous  impulses  are  aroused ;  there  is  a  vague  antici- 
pation, a  burning  hope,  of  a  marvelous  future.  Old 
things  are  to  pass  speedily  away  and  a  new  heavens 
and  earth  are  to  come  into  existence.  But  impulse  burn§, 
itself  up.  Emotion  cannot  be  kept  at  its  full  tide.  Ob- 
stacles are  encountered  upon  which  action  dashes  itself 
into  ineffectual  spray.  Or  if  it  achieves,  by  luck,  a 
transitory  success,  it  is  intoxicated,  and  plumes  itself 
on  victory  while  it  is  on  the  road  to  sudden  defeat. 
Meantime,  other  men,  not  carried  away  by  impulse,  use 
established  habits  and  a  shrewd  cold  intellect  that  ma- 
nipulates them.  The  outcome  is  the  victory  of  baser 
<3esire  directed  by  insight  and  cunning  over  generous 
clesire  which  does  not  know  its  way. 


25(J          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

The  realistic  man  of  the  world  has  evolved  a  regular 
technique  for  dealing  with  idealistic  outbursts  that 
threaten  his  supremacy.  His  aims  are  low,  but  he 
knows  the  means  by  which  they  are  to  be  executed.  His 
knowledge  of  conditions  is  narrow  but  it  is  effective 
within  its  confines.  His  foresight  is  limited  to  results 
that  concern  personal  success,  but  is  sharp,  clearcut. 
He  has  no  great  difficulty  in  drafting  the  idealistic 
desire  of  others  with  its  vague  enthusiasms  and  its 
cloudy  perceptions  into  canals  where  it  will  serve  his 
own  purposes.  The  energies  excited  by  emotional  ideal- 
ism run  into  the  materialistic  reservoirs  provided  by 
the  contriving  thought  of  those  who  have  not  surren- 
dered their  minds  to  their  sentiment. 

The  glorification  of  affection  and  aspiration  at  the 
expense  of  thought  is  a  survival  of  romantic  optimism. 
It  assumes  a  pre-established  harmony  between  natural 
impulse  and  natural  objects.  Only  such  a  harmony 
justifies  the  belief  that  generous  feeling  will  find  its 
way  illuminated  by  the  sheer  nobility  of  its  own  qual- 
ity. Persons  of  a  literary  turn  of  mind  are  as  subject 
to  this  fallacy  as  intellectual  specialists  arc  apt  to  the 
contrary  fallacy  that  theorizing  apart  from  force  of 
impulse  and  habit  will  get  affairs  forward.  They  tend 
to  fancy  that  things  are  as  pliant  to  imagination  as 
are  words,  that  an  emotion  can  compose  affairs  as  if 
they  were  materials  for  a  lyric  poem.  But  if  the  ob- 
jects of  the  environment  were  only  as  plastic  as  the 
materials  of  poetic  art,  men  would  never  have  been 
obliged  to  have  recourse  to  creation  in  the  medium  of 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  257 

words.  We  idealize  in  fancy  because  our  idealizations 
in  fact  are  balked.  And  while  the  latter  must  start 
with  imaginative  idealizations  instigated  by  release  of 
generous  impulse,  they  can  be  carried  through  only 
when  the  hard  labor  of  observation,  memory  and  fore- 
sight weds  the  vision  of  imagination  to  the  organized 
efficiencies  of  habit. 

Sometimes  desire  means  not  bare  impulse  but  impulse 
which  has  sense  of  an  objective.  In  this  case  desire  and 
thought  cannot  be  opposed,  for  desire  includes  thought 
within  itself.  The  question  is  now  how  far  the  work  of 
thought  has  been  done,  how  adequate  is  its  perception 
of  its  directing  object.  For  the  moving  force  may  be 
a  shadowy  presentiment  constructed  by  wishful  hope 
rather  than  by  study  of  conditions ;  it  may  be  an  emo- 
tional indulgence  rather  than  a  solid  plan  built  upon 
the  rocks  of  actuality  discovered  by  accurate  inquiries. 
There  is  no  thought  without  the  impeding  of  impulse. 
But  the  obstruction  may  merely  intensify  its  blind  surge 
forward ;  or  it  may  divert  the  force  of  forward  impulse 
into  observation  of  existing  conditions  and  forecast  of 
their  future  consequences.  This  long  way  around  is 
the  short  way  home  for  desire. 

No  issue  of  morals  is  more  far-reaching  than  the  one 
herewith  sketched.  Historically  speaking,  there  is 
point  in  the  attacks  of  those  who  speak  slightingly  of 
science  and  intellect,  and  who  would  limit  their  moral 
significance  to  supplying  incidental  help  to  execution 
of  purposes  born  of  affection.  Thought  too  often  is 
specialized  in  a  remote  and  separate  pursuit,  or  em- 


258         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ployed  in  a  hard  way  to  contrive  the  instrumentalities 
of  "  success."  Intellect  is  too  often  made  a  tool  for  a 
systematized  apology  for  things  as  "  they  are,"  that 
is  for  customs  that  benefit  the  class  in  power,  or  else 
a  road  to  an  interesting  occupation  which  accumulates 
facts  and  ideas  as  other  men  gather  dollars,  while 
priding  itself  on  its  ideal  quality.  No  wonder  that  at 
times  catastrophes  that  affect  men  in  common  are  wel- 
comed. For  the  moment  they  turn  science  away  from 
its  abstract  technicalities  into  a  servant  of  some  human 
aspiration ;  the  hard,  chilly  calculations  of  intellect  are 
swept  away  by  floods  of  sympathy  and  common 
loyalties. 

But,  alas,  emotjan^^without  thought  is  unstable.  It 
rises  like  the  tide  and  subsides  like  the  tide  irrespective 
of  what  it  has  accomplished.  It  is  easily  diverted  into 
any  side  channel  dug  by  old  habits  or  provided  by  cool 
cunning,  or  it  disperses  itself  aimlessly.  Then  comes 
the  reaction  of  disillusionment,  and  men  turn  all  the 
more  fiercely  to  the  pursuit  of  narrow  ends  where  they 
are  habituated  to  use  observation  and  planning  and 
where  they  have  acquired  some  control  of  conditions. 
The  separation  of  warm  emotion  and  cool  intelligence 
is  the  great  moral  tragedy.  This  division  is  perpetu- 
ated by  those  who  deprecate  science  and  foresight  in 
behalf  of  affection  as  it  is  by  those  who  in  the  name  of 
an  idol  labeled  reason  would  quench  passion.  The  in- 
\tellect  is  always  inspired  by  some  impulse.  Even  the 
most  case-hardened  scientific  specialist,  the  most  ab- 
stract philosopher,  is  moved  by  some  passion.  But 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  259 

an  actuating  impulse  easily  hardens  into  isolated  habit. 
It  is  unavowed  and  disconnected.  The  remedy 
is  not  lapse  of  thought,  but  its  quickening  and 
extension  to  contemplate  the  continuities  of  existence, 
and  restore  the  connection  of  the  isolated  desire  to 
the  companionship  of  its  fellows.  The  glorification  of 
"  will "  apart  from  thought  turns  out  either  a  com- 
mitment to  blind  action  which  serves  the  purpose  of 
those  who  guide  their  deeds  by  narrow  plans,  or  else 
a  sentimental,  romantic  faith  in  the  harmonies  of  na- 
ture leading  straight  to  disaster. 

In  words  at  least,  the  association  of  idealism  with 
emotion  and  impulse  has  been  repeatedly  implied  in 
the  foregoing.  The  connection  is  more  than  verbal. 
Every  end  that  man  holds  up,  every  project  he  enter- 
tains is  ideal.  It  marks  something  wanted,  rather  than 
something  existing.  It  is  wanted  because  existence  as  it 
now  is  does  not  furnish  it.  It  carries  with  itself,  then, 
a  sense  of  contrast  to  the  achieved,  to  the  existent. 
It  outruns  the  seen  and  touched.  It  is  the  work  of 


faith  and  hope  even  when  it  is  the  plan  of  the  mosj 
hard-headed  "practical "  man.  But  though  ideal  in 
this  sense  it  is  not  an  ideal.  Common  sense  revolts  at 
calling  every  project,  every  design,  every  contrivance  of 
cunning,  ideal,  because  common  sense  includes  above  all 
in  its  conception  of  the  ideal  the  quality  of  the  plan 
proposed. 

Idealistic  revolt  is  blind  and  like  every  blind  reaction 
sweeps  us  away.  The  quality  of  the  ideal  is  exalted  till 
it  is  something  beyond  all  possibility  of  definite  plan  and 


260         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

execution.  Its  sublimity  renders  it  inaccessibly  remote. 
An  ideal  becomes  a  synonym  for  whatever  is  inspiring 
• — and  impossible.  Then,  since  intelligence  cannot  be 
wholly  suppressed,  the  ideal  is  hardened  by  thought 
into  some  high,  far-away  object.  It  is  so  elevated  and 
so  distant  that  it  does  not  belong  to  this  world  or  to 
experience.  It  is  in  technical  language,  transcenden- 
tal; in  common  speech,  supernatural,  of  heaven  not  of 
earth.  The  ideal  is  then  a  goal  of  final  exhaustive, 
comprehensive  perfection  which  can  be  defined  only  by 
complete  contrast  with  the  actual.  Although  impos- 
sible of  realization  and  of  conception,  it  is  still  regarded 
as  the  source  of  all  generous  discontent  with  actualities 
and  of  all  inspiration  to  progress. 

This  notion  of  the  nature  and  office  of  ideals  com- 
bines in  one  contradictory  whole  all  that  is  vicious  in 
the  separation  of  desire  and  thought.  It  strives  while 
retaining  the  vagueness  of  emotion  to  simulate  the 
objective  definiteness  of  thought.  It  follows  the  nat- 
ural course  of  intelligence  in  demanding  an  object  which 
will  unify  and  fulfil  desire,  and  then  cancels  the  work 
of  thought  by  treating  the  object  as  ineffable  and  un- 
related to  present  action  and  experience.  It  converts 
the  surge  of  present  impulse  into  a  future  end  only  to 
swamp  the  endeavor  to  clarify  this  end  in  a  gush  of 
unconsidered  feeling.  It  is  supposed  that  the  thought 
of  the  ideal  is  necessary  to  arouse  dissatisfaction  with 
the  present  and  to  arouse  effort  to  change  it.  But  in 
reality  the  ideal  is  itself  the  product  of  discontent  with 
conditions.  Instead  however  of  serving  to  organize  and 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  261 

direct  effort,  it  operates  as  a  compensatory  dream.  It 
becomes  another  ready-made  world.  Instead  of  pro- 
moting effort  at  concrete  transformations  of  what  ex- 
ists, it  constitutes  another  kind  of  existence  already 
somewhere  in  being.  It  is  a  refuge,  an  asylum  from 
effort.  Thus  the  energy  that  might  be  spent  in  trans- 
forming present  ills  goes  into  oscillating  flights  into  a 
far  away  perfect  world  and  the  tedium  of  enforced  re- 
turns into  the  necessities  of  the  present  evil  world. 

We  can  recover  the  genuine  import  of  ideals  and 
idealism  only  by  disentangling  this  unreal  mixture  of 
thought  and  emotion.  The  action  of  deliberation,  as 
we  have  seen,  consists  in  selecting  some  foreseen  con- 
sequence to  serve  as  a  stimulus  to  present  action.  It 
brings  future  possibilities  into  the  present  scene  and 
thereby  frees  and  expands  present  tendencies.  But  the 
selected  consequence  is  set  in  an  indefinite  context  of 
other  consequences  just  as  real  as  it  is,  and  many  of 
them  much  more  certain  in  fact.  The  "  ends  "  that 
are  foreseen  and  utilized  mark  out  a  little  island  in  an 
infinite  sea.  This  limitation  would  be  fatal  were  the 
proper  function  of  ends  anything  else  than  to  liberate 
and  guide  present  action  out  of  its  perplexities  and 
confusions.  But  this  service  constitutes  the  sole  mean- 
ing of  aims  and  purposes.  Hence  their  slight  extent 
in  comparison  with  ignored  and  unforeseen  conse- 
quences is  of  no  import  in  itself.  The  "  ideal  "  as  it 
stands  in  popular  thought,  the  notion  of  a  complete 
and  exhaustive  realization,  is  remote  from  the  true 
functions  of  ends,  and  would  only  embarrass  us  if  it 


262          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

could  be  embraced  in  thought  instead  of  being,  as  it  is, 
a  comment  by  the  emotions. 

For  the  sense  of  an  indefinite  context  of  consequences 
from  among  which  the  aim  is  selected  enters  into  the 
present  meaning  of  activity.  The  "  end  "  is  the  figured 
pattern  at  the  center  of  the  field  through  which  runs 
the  axis  of  conduct.  About  this  central  figuration  ex- 
tends infinitely  a  supporting  background  in  a  vague 
whole,  undefined  and  undiscriminated.  At  most  intelli- 
gence but  throws  a  spotlight  on  that  little  part  of  the 
whole  which  marks  out  the  axis  of  movement.  Even 
if  the  light  is  flickering  and  the  illuminated  portion 
stands  forth  only  dimly  from  the  shadowy  background, 
it  suffices  if  we  are  shown  the  way  to  move.  To  the  rest 
of  the  consequences,  collateral  and  remote,  corresponds 
a  background  of  feeling,  of  diffused  emotion.  This 
forms  the  stuff  of  the  ideal. 

From  the  standpoint  of  its  definite  aim  any  act  is 
petty  in  comparison  with  the  totality  of  natural  events. 
What  is  accomplished  directly  as  the  outcome  of  a  turn 
which  our  action  gives  the  course  of  events  is  infinites- 
imal in  comparison  with  their  total  sweep. 


illusion  of  conceit  persuades  us  that  co^mic_  difference 
Jiangs  upon  even  our  wisest  and  most  strenuous  effort. 
Yet  discontent  with  this  limitation  is  as  unreasonble  as 
relying  upon  an  illusion  of  external  importance  to  keep 
ourselves  going.  In  a  genuine  sense  every  act  is  already 
possessed  of  infinite  import.  The  little  part  of  the 
scheme  of  affairs  which  is  modifiable  by  our  efforts  is 
continuous  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  boundaries 


DESIRE  AND  INTELLIGENCE  263 

of  our  garden  plot  join  it  to  the  world  of  our  neighbors 
and  our  neighbors'  neighbors.  That  small  effort  which 
we  can  put  forth  is  in  turn  connected  with  an  infinity  of 
events  that  sustain  and  support  it.  Thp_nnpsninusnpsa 
of  this  encompassing  infinity  of  connections  is  ideal. 
When  a  sense  of  the  infinite  reach  of  an  act  physically 
occurring  in  a  small  point  of  space  and  occupying  a 
petty  instant  of  times  comes  home  to  us,  the  meaning  of 
a  present  act  is  seen  to  be  vast,  immeasurable,  un- 
thinkable. This  ideal  is  not  a  goal  to  be  attained.  It 
is  a  significance  to  be  felt,  appreciated.  Though  con- 
sciousness of  it  cannot  become  intellectualized  (iden- 
tified in  objects  of  a  distinct  character)  yet  emotional 
appreciation  of  it  is  won  only  by  those  willing  to  think. 
It  is  the  office  of  art  and  religion  to  evoke  such  ap- 
f  fcreciations  and  intimations ;  to  enhance  and  steady  them 
i  till  they  are  wrought  into  the  texture  of  our  lives.  Some 
I  philosophers  define  religious  consciousness  as  beginning 
where  moral  and  intellectual  consciousness  leave  off.  In 
the  sense  that  definite  purposes  and  methods  shade  off 
of  necessity  into  a  vast  whole  which  is  incapable  of  ob- 
jective presentation  this  view  is  correct.  But  they  have 
falsified  the  conception  by  treating  the  religious  con- 
sciousness as  something  that  comes  after  an  experience 
in  which  striving,  resolution  and  foresight  are  found. 
To  them  morality  and  science  are  a  striving;  when  striv- 
ing ceases  a  moral  holiday  begins,  an  excursion  beyond 
the  utmost  flight  of  legitimate  thought  and  endeavor. 
But  there  is  a  point  in  every  intelligent  activity  where 
effort  ceases ;  where  thought  and  doing  fall  back  upon  a 


264,         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

course  of  events  which  effort  and  reflection  cannot 
touch.  There  is  a  point  in  deliberate  action  where  defi- 
nite thought  fades  into  the  ineffable  and  undefinable — 
into  emotion.  If  the  sense  of  this  effortless  and  unfath- 
,. |4  omable  whole  comes  only  in  alternation  with  the  sense  of 
1  ^  strain  in  action  and  labor  in  thought,  then  we  spend 
our  lives  in  oscillating  between  what  is  cramped  and 
enforced  and  a  brief  transitory  escape.  The  function 
of  religion  is  then  caricatured  rather  than  realized. 
Morals,  like  war,  is  thought  of  as  hell,  and  religion, 
like  peace,  as  a  respite.  The  religious  experience  is  a 
reality  in  so  far  as  in  the  midst  of  effort  to  foresee 
and  regulate  future  objects  we  are  sustained  and  ex- 
panded in  feebleness  and  failure  by  the  sense  of  an 
enveloping  whole.  Peace  in  action  not  after  it  is  the 
contribution  of  the  ideal  to  conduct. 


IX 


Over  and  over  again,  one  point  has  recurred  for  criti- 
cism;— the  subordination  of  activity  to  a  result  outside 
itself.  Whether  that  goal  be  thought  of  as  pleasure,  as 
virtue,  as  perfection,  as  final  enjoyment  of  salvation, 
is  secondary  to  the  fact  that  the  moralists  who 
have  asserted  fixed  ends  have  in  all  their  differences 
from  one  another  agreed  in  the  basic  idea  that  present 
activity  is  but  a  means.  We  have  insisted  that  hap- 
piness, reasonableness,  virtue,  perfecting,  are  on  the 
contrary  parts  of  the  present  significance  of  present 
action.  Memory  of  the  past,  observation  of  the  pres- 
ent, foresight  of  the  future  are  indispensable.  But  they 
are  indispensable  to  a  present  liberation,  an  enriching 
growth  of  action.  Happiness  is  fundamental  in  morals 
only  because  happiness  is  not  something  to  be  sought 
for,  but  is  something  now  attained,  even  in  the  midst  of 
pain  and  trouble,  whenever  recognition  of  our  ties  with 
nature  and  with  fellow-men  releases  and  informs  our 
action.  Reasonableness  is  a  necessity  because  it  is  the 
perception  of  the  continuities  that  take  action  out  of 
its  immediateness  and  isolation  into  connection  with 
the  past  and  future. 

Perhaps  the  criticism  and  insistence  have  been  too 
incessant.  They  may  have  provoked  the  reader  to  re- 
action. He  may  readily  concede  that  orthodox  theo- 

265 


266          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ries  have  been  onesided  in  sacrificing  the  present  to 
future  good,  making  of  the  present  but  an  onerous 
obligation  or  a  sacrifice  endured  for  future  gain.  But 
why,  he  may  protest,  go  to  an  opposite  extreme  and 
make  the  future  but  a  means  to  the  significance  of  the 
present?  Why  should  the  power  of  foresight  and  effort 
to  shape  the  future,  to  regulate  what  is  to  happen,  be 
slighted  ?  Is  not  the  effect  of  such  a  doctrine  to  weaken 
putting  forth  of  endeavor  in  order  to  make  the  future 
better  than  the  present?  Control  of  the  future  may  be 
limited  in  extent,  but  it  is  correspondingly  precious; 
we  should  jealously  cherish  whatever  encourages  and 
sustains  effort  to  that  end.  To  make  little  of  this  pos- 
sibility, in  effect,  it  will  be  argued,  is  to  decrease  the 
care  and  endeavor  upon  which  progress  depends. 

Control  of  the  future  is  indeed  precious  in  exact 
proportion  to  its  difficulty,  its  moderate  degree  of  at- 
tainability. Anything  that  actually  tends  to  make  that 
control  less  than  it  now  is  would  be  a  movement  back- 
ward into  sloth  and  triviality.  But  there  is  a  differ- 
ence between  future  improvement  as  a  result  and  as  a 
direct  aim.  To  make  it  an  aim  is  to  throw  away  the 
surest  means  of  attaining  it,  namely  attention  to  the 
full  use  of  present  resources  in  the  present  situation. 
Forecast  of  future  conditions,  scientific  study  of  past 
and  present  in  order  that  the  forecast  may  be  intelli- 
gent, are  indeed  necessities.  Concentration  of  intel- 
lectual concern  upon  the  future,  solicitude  for  scope  and 
precision  of  estimate  characteristic  of  any  well  con- 
ducted affair,  naturally  give  the  impression  that  their 


PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  267 

animating  purpose  is  control  of  the  future.  But 
thought  about  future  happenings  is  the  only  way  we 
can  judge  the  present;  it  is  the  only  way  to  appraise 
its  significance.  Without  such  projection,  there  can  be 
no  projects,  no  plans  for  administering  present  ener- 
gies, overcoming  present  obstacles.  Deliberately  to 
subordinate  the  present  to  the  future  is  to  subject  the 
comparatively  secure  to  the  precarious,  exchange  re- 
sources for  liabilities,  surrender  what  is  under  control 
to  what  is,  relatively,  incapable  of  control. 

The  amount  of  control  which  will  come  into  exist- 
ence in  the  future  is  not  within  control.  But  such 
an  amount  as  turns  out  to  be  practicable  accrues  only 
in  consequence  of  the  best  possible  management  of 
present  means  and  obstacles.  Dominating  intellectual 
pre-occupation  with  the  future  is  the  way  by  which 
efficiency  in  dealing  with  the  present  is  attained.  It  is 
a  way,  not  a  goal.  And,  upon  the  very  most  hopeful 
outlook,  study  and  planning  are  more  important  in  the 
meaning,  the  enrichment  of  content,  which  they  add  to 
present  activity  than  is  the  increase  of  external  con- 
trol they  effect.  Nor  is  this  doctrine  passivistic  in 
tendency.  What  sense  is  there  in  increased  external 
control  except  to  increase  the  intrinsic  significance  of 
living?  The  future  that  is  foreseen  is  a  future  that  is 
sometime  to  be  a  present.  Is  the  value  of  that  present 
also  to  be  postponed  to  a  future  date,  and  so  on  indef- 
initely? Or,  if  the  good  we  are  struggling  to  attain  in 
the  future  is  one  to  be  actually  realized  when  that  fu- 
ture becomes  present,  why  should  not  the  good  of  this 


268          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

present  be  equally  precious?  And  is  there,  again,  any 
intelligent  way  of  modifying  the  future  except  to  at- 
tend to  the  full  possibilities  of  the  present?  Scamping 
the  present  in  behalf  of  the  future  leads  only  to  render- 
ing the  future  less  manageable.  It  increases  the  proba- 
bility of  molestation  by  future  events. 

Remarks  cast  in  this  form  probably  seem  too  much 
like  a  logical  manipulation  of  the  concepts  of  present 
and  future  to  be  convincing.  Building  a  house  is  a 
typical  instance  of  an  intelligent  activity.  It  is  an 
activity  directed  by  a  plan,  a  design.  The  plan  is 
itself  based  upon  a  foresight  of  future  uses.  This  fore- 
sight is  in  turn  dependent  upon  an  organized  survey 
of  past  experiences  and  of  present  conditions,  a  recol- 
lection of  former  experiences  of  living  in  houses  and  an 
acquaintance  with  present  materials,  prices,  resources, 
etc.  Now  if  a  legitimate  case  of  subordination  of  pres- 
ent to  regulation  of  the  future  may  anywhere  be  found, 
it  is  in  such  a  case  as  this.  For  a  man  usually  builds 
a  house  for  the  sake  of  the  comfort  and  security,  the 
"  control,"  thereby  afforded  to  future  living  rather  than, 
just  for  the  fun — or  the  trouble — of  building.  If  in 
such  a  case  inspection  shows  that,  after  all,  intellectual 
concern  with  the  past  and  future  is  for  the  sake  of 
directing  present  activity  and  giving  it  meaning,  the 
conclusion  may  be  accepted  for  other  cases. 

Note  that  the  present  activity  is  the  only  one  really 
under  control.  The  man  may  die  before  the  house  is 
built,  or  his  financial  conditions  may  change,  or  he  may 
need  to  remove  to  another  place.  If  he  attempts  to 


PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  269 

provide  for  all  contingencies,  he  will  never  do  anything; 
if  he  allows  his  attention  to  be  much  distracted  by  them, 
he  won't  do  well  his  present  planning  and  execution. 
The  more  he  considers  the  future  uses  to  which  the  house 
will  probably  be  put  the  better  he  will  do  his  present 
job  which  is  the  activity  of  building.  Control  of  fu- 
ture living,  such  as  it  may  turn  out  to  be,  is  wholly 
dependent  upon  taking  his  present  activity,  seriously 
and  devotedly,  as  an  end,  not  a  means.  And  a  man  has 
his  hands  full  in  doing  well  what  now  needs  to  be  done. 
Until  men  have  formed  the  habit  of  using  intelligence 
fully  as  a  guide  to  present  action  they  will  never  find 
out  how  much  control  of  future  contingencies  is  pos- 
sible. As  things  are,  men  so  habitually  scamp  present 
action  in  behalf  of  future  "  ends  "  that  the  facts  for 
estimating  the  extent  of  the  possibility  of  reduction  of 
future  contingencies  have  not  been  disclosed.  What  a 
man  is  doing  limits  both  his  direct  control  and  his  re- 
sponsibility. We  must  not  confuse  the  act  of  building 
with  the  house  when  built.  The  latter  is  a  means,  not 
a  fulfilment.  But  it  is  such  only  because  it  enters  into 
a  new  activity  which  is  present  not  future.  Life  is  con- 
tinuous. The  act  of  building  in  time  gives  way  to  the 
acts  connected  with  a  domicile.  But  everywhere  the 
good,  the  fulfilment,  the  meaning  of  activity,  resides  in 
a  present  made  possible  by  judging  existing  conditions 
in  their  connections. 

If  we  seek  for  an  illustration  on  a  larger  scale,  educa- 
tion furnishes  us  with  a  poignant  example.  As  tradi- 
tionally conducted,  it  strikingly  exhibits  a  subordina- 


270          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

tion  of  the  living  present  to  a  remote  and  precarious 
future.  To  prepare,  to  get  ready,  is  its  key-note.  The 
actual  outcome  is  lack  of  adequate  preparation,  of  in- 
telligent adaptation.  The  professed  exaltation  of  the 
future  turns  out  in  practice  a  blind  following  of  tra- 
dition, a  rule  of  thumb  muddling  along  from  day  to 
day;  or,  as  in  some  of  the  projects  called  industrial 
education,  a  determined  effort  on  the  part  of  one  class 
of  the  community  to  secure  its  future  at  the  expense 
of  another  class.  If  education  were  conducted  as  a 
process  of  fullest  utilization  of  present  resources,  lib- 
erating and  guiding  capacities  that  are  now  urgent,  it 
goes  without  saying  that  the  lives  of  the  young  would 
be  much  richer  in  meaning  than  they  are  now.  It  also 
follows  that  intelligence  would  be  kept  busy  in  studying 
all  indications  of  power,  all  obstacles  and  perversions, 
all  products  of  the  past  that  throw  light  upon  present 
capacity,  and  in  forecasting  the  future  career  of  im- 
pulse and  habit  now  active — not  for  the  sake  of  sub- 
ordinating the  latter  but  in  order  to  treat  them  in- 
telligently. As  a  consequence  whatever  fortification 
and  expansion  of  the  future  that  is  possible  will  be 
achieved — as  it  is  now  dismally  unattained. 

A  more  complicated  instance  is  found  in  the  domi- 
nant quality  of  our  industrial  activity.  It  may  be  dog- 
matically declared  that  the  roots  of  its  evils  are  found 
in  the  separation  of  production  from  consumption — 
that  is,  actual  consummation,  fulfilment.  A  normal 
case  of  their  relationship  is  found  in  the  taking  of 
food.  Food  is  consumed  and  vigor  is  produced.  The 


PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  271 

difference  between  the  two  is  one  of  directions  or  di- 
mensions distinguished  by  intellect.  In  reality  there  is 
simply  conversion  of  energy  from  one  form  to  another 
wherein  it  is  more  available — of  greater  significance. 
The  activity  of  the  artist,  the  sportsman,  the  scientific 
inquirer  exemplifies  the  same  balance.  Activity  should 
be  productive.  This  is  to  say  it  should  have  a  bearing 
on  the  future,  should  effect  control  of  it.  But  so  far  as 
a  productive  action  is  intrinsically  creative,  it  has  its 
own  intrinsic  value.  Reference  to  future  products  and 
future  enjoyments  is  but  a  way  of  enhancing  percep- 
tion of  an  immanent  meaning.  A  skilled  artisan  who 
enjoys  his  work  is  aware  that  what  he  is  making  is  made 
for  future  use.  Externally  his  action  is  one  technically 
labeled  "  production."  It  seems  to  illustrate  the  sub- 
jection of  present  activity  to  remote  ends.  But  actu- 
ally, morally,  psychologically,  the  sense  of  the  utility 
of  the  article  produced  is  a  factor  in  the  present  sig- 
nificance of  action  due  to  the  present  utilization  of 
abilities,  giving  play  to  taste  and  skill,  accomplishing 
something  now.  The  moment  production  is  severed 
from  immediate  satisfaction,  it  becomes  "  labor," 
drudgery,  a  task  reluctantly  performed. 

Yet  the  whole  tendency  of  modern  economic  life  has 
been  to  assume  that  consumption  will  take  care  of  itself 
provided  only  production  is  grossly  and  intensely  at- 
tended to.  Making  things  is  frantically  accelerated; 
and  every  mechanical  device  used  to  swell  the  senseless 
bulk.  As  a  result  most  workers  find  no  replenishment, 
no  renewal  and  growth  of  mind,  no  fulfilment  in  work. 


272          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

They  labor  to  get  mere  means  of  later  satisfaction. 
This  when  procured  is  isolated  in  turn  from  production 
and  is  reduced  to  a  barren  physical  affair  or  a  sensuous 
compensation  for  normal  goods  denied.  Meantime  the 
fatuity  of  severing  production  from  consumption,  from 
present  enriching  of  life,  is  made  evident  by  economic 
crises,  by  periods  of  unemployment  alternating  with 
periods  of  exercise,  work  or  "  over-production."  Pro- 
duction apart  from  fulfilment  becomes  purely  a  matter 
of  quantity ;  for  distinction,  quality,  is  a  matter  of  pres- 
ent meaning.  Esthetic  elements  being  excluded,  the 
mechanical  reign.  Production  lacks  criteria ;  one  thing 
is  better  than  another  if  it  can  be  made  faster  or  in 
greater  mass.  Leisure  is  not  the  nourishment  of  mind 
in  work,  nor  a  recreation;  it  is  a  feverish  hurry  for 
diversion,  excitement,  display,  otherwise  there  is  no 
leisure  except  a  sodden  torpor.  Fatigue  due  for  some 
to  monotony  and  for  others  to  overstrain  in  main- 
taining the  pace  is  inevitable.  Socially,  the  separation 
of  production  and  consumption,  means  and  ends,  is  the 
root  of  the  most  profound  division  of  classes.  Those 
who  fix  the  "  ends  "  for  production  are  in  control,  those 
who  engage  in  isolated  productive  activity  are  the  sub- 
ject-class. But  if  the  latter  are  oppressed  the  former 
are  not  truly  free.  Their  consumptions  are  acci- 
dental ostentation  and  extravagance,  not  a  normal  con- 
summation or  fulfilment  of  activity.  The  remainder  of 
their  lives  is  spent  in  enslavement  to  keeping  the  ma- 
chinery going  at  an  increasingly  rapid  rate. 

Meantime  class  struggle  grows  between  those  whose 


THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  273 

productive  labor  is  enforced  by  necessity  and  those  who 
are  privileged  consumers.  And  the  exaggeration  of 
production  due  to  its  isolation  from  ignored  consump- 
tion so  hypnotizes  attention  that  even  would-be  re- 
formers, like  Marxian  socialists,  assert  that  the  entire 
social  problem  focuses  at  the  point  of  production. 
Since  this  separation  of  means  from  ends  signifies  an 
erection  of  means  into  ends,  it  is  no  wonder  that  a 
"  materialistic  conception  of  history  "  emerges.  It  is 
not  an  invention  of  Marx ;  it  is  a  record  of  fact  so  far 
as  the  separation  in  question  obtains.  For  practicable 
idealism  is  found  only  in  a  fulfilment,  a  consumption 
which  is  a  replenishing,  growth,  renewal  of  mind  and 
body.  Harmony  of  social  interests  is  found  in  the 
wide-spread  sharing  of  activities  significant  in  them- 
selves, that  is  to  say,  at  the  point  of  consumption.*  But 
the  forcing  of  production  apart  from  consumption  leads 
to  the  monstrous  belief  that  class-struggle  civil  war  is 
a  means  of  social  progress,  instead  of  a  register  of  the 
barriers  to  its  attainment.  Yet  here  too  the  Marxian 
reads  aright  the  character  of  most  current  economic 
activity. 

The  history  of  economic  activity  thus  exemplifies  the 
moral  consequences  of  the  separation  of  present  activ- 
ity and  future  "  ends  "  from  each  other.  It  also  em- 
bodies the  difficulty  of  the  problem — the  tax  placed  by 
it  upon  thought  and  good  will.  For  the  professed  ideal- 
ist and  the  hard-headed  materialist  or  "  practical " 
man,  have  conspired  together  to  sustain  this  situation. 

*  Acknowledgment  is  due  "  The  Social  Interpretation  of  His- 
tory" by  Maurice  Williams. 


274         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

The  "  idealist  "  sets  up  as  the  ideal  not  fullness  of 
meaning  of  the  present  but  a  remote  goal.  Hence  the 
present  is  evacuated  of  meaning.  It  is  reduced  to  being 
a  mere  external  instrument,  an  evil  necessity  due  to  the 
distance  between  us  and  significant  valid  satisfaction. 
Appreciation,  joy,  peace  in  present  activity  are  sus- 
pect. They  are  regarded  as  diversions,  temptations, 
unworthy  relaxations.  Then  since  human  nature  must 
have  present  realization,  a  sentimental,  romantic  en- 
joyment of  the  ideal  becomes  a  substitute  for  intelli- 
gent and  rewarding  activity.  The  utopia  cannot  be 
realized  in  fact  but  it  may  be  appropriated  in  fantasy 
and  serve  as  an  anodyne  to  blunt  the  sense  of  a  misery 
which  after  all  endures.  Some  private  key  to  a  present 
entering  upon  remote  and  superior  bliss  is  sought,  just 
as  the  evangelical  enjoys  a  complacent  and  superior 
sense  of  a  salvation  unobtained  by  fellow  mortals.  Thus 
the  normal  demand  for  realization,  for  satisfaction  in 
the  present,  is  abnormally  met. 

Meantime  the  practical  man  wants  something  defi- 
nite, tangible  and  presumably  obtainable  for  which  to 
work.  He  is  looking  after  "  a  good  thing  "  as  the  aver- 
age man  is  looking  after  a  "  good  time,"  that  natural 
caricature  of  an  intrinsically  significant  activity.  Yet 
his  activity  is  impractical.  He  is  looking  for  satisfac- 
tion somewhere  else  than  where  it  can  be  found.  In  his 
utopian  search  for  a  future  good  he  neglects  the  only 
place  where  good  can  be  found.  He  empties  present 
activity  of  meaning  by  making  it  a  mere  instrumental- 
ity. When  the  future  arrives  it  is  only  after  all  another 


THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  275 

despised  present.  By  habit  as  well  as  by  definition  it 
is  still  a  means  to  something  which  has  yet  to  come. 
Again  human  nature  must  have  its  claims  satisfied,  and 
sensuality  is  the  inevitable  recourse.  Usually  a  com- 
promise is  worked  out,  by  which  a  man  for  his  working- 
hours  accepts  the  philosophy  of  activity  for  some  fu- 
ture result,  while  at  odd  leisure  times  he  enters  by  con- 
ventionally recognized  channels  upon  an  enjoyment  of 
"  spiritual  "  blessings  and  "  ideal  "  refinements.  The 
problem  of  serving  God  and  Mammon  is  thus  solved. 
The  situation  exemplifies  the  concrete  meaning  of  the 
separation  of  means  from  ends  which  is  the  intellectual 
reflex  of  the  divorce  of  theory  and  practice,  intelligence 
and  habit,  foresight  and  present  impulse.  Moralists 
have  spent  time  and  energy  in  showing  what  happens 
when  appetite,  impulse,  is  indulged  without  reference  to 
consequences  and  reason.  But  they  have  mostly  ignored 
the  counterpart  evils  of  an  intelligence  that  conceives 
ideals  and  goods  which  do  not  enter  into  present  impulse 
and  habit.  The  life  of  reason  has  been  specialized, 
romanticized,  or  made  a  heavy  burden.  This  situation 
embodies  the  import  of  the  problem  of  actualizing  the 
place  of  intelligence  in  conduct. 

Our  whole  account  of  the  place  of  intelligence  in  con- 
duct is  exposed  however  to  the  charge  of  being  itself 
romantic,  a  compensatory  idealization.  The  history  of 
mind  is  a  record  of  intellect  which  registers,  with  more 
or  less  inaccuracy,  what  has  happened  after  it  has  hap- 
pened. The  crisis  in  which  the  intervention  of  fore- 
seeing and  directing  mind  is  needed  passes  unnoted, 


276          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

with  attention  directed  toward  incidentals  and  irrele- 
vancies.  The  work  of  intellect  is  post  mortem.  The 
rise  of  social  science,  it  will  be  pointed  out,  has  in- 
creased the  amount  of  registering  that  occurs.  Social 
post  mortems  occur  much  more  frequently  than  they 
used  to.  But  one  of  the  things  which  the  unbiased  mind 
will  register  is  the  impotency  of  discussion,  analysis 
and  reporting  in  modifying  the  course  of  events.  The 
latter  goes  its  way  unheeding.  The  reply  that  this 
condition  of  matters  shows  not  the  impotency  of  intel- 
ligence but  that  what  passes  for  science  is  not  science 
is  too  easy  a  retort  to  be  satisfactory.  We  must  have 
recourse  to  some  concrete  facts  or  surrender  our  doc- 
trine just  at  the  moment  when  we  have  formulated  it. 
Technical  affairs  give  evidence  that  the  work  of  in- 
quiry, reporting  an  analysis  is  not  always  ineffectual. 
The  development  of  a  chain  of  "  nation-wide  "  tobacco 
shops,  of  a  well  managed  national  telephone  system,  of 
the  extension  of  the  service  of  an  electric-light  plant 
testify  to  the  fact  that  study,  reflection  and  the  forma- 
tion of  plans  do  in  some  instances  determine  a  course 
of  events.  The  effect  is  seen  in  both  engineering  man- 
agement and  in  national  commercial  expansion.  Such 
potency  however,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  limited  to  just 
those  matters  that  are  called  technical  in  contrast  with 
the  larger  affairs  of  humanity.  But  if  we  seek,  as  we 
should,  for  a  definition  of  "  technical,"  we  can  hardly 
find  any  save  one  that  goes  in  a  circle :  Affairs  are  tech- 
nical in  which  observation,  analysis  and  intellectual  or- 
ganization are  determining  factors.  Is  the  conclusion 


THE  PRESENT  AND  FUTURE  277 

to  be  drawn  a  conviction  that  our  wider  social  interests 
are  so  different  from  those  in  which  intelligence  is  a 
directing  factor  that  in  the  former  science  must  always 
remain  a  belated  visitor  coming  upon  the  scene  after 
matters  are  settled?  No,  the  logical  conclusion  is  that 
as  yet  we  have  no  technique  in  important  economic, 
political  and  international  affairs.  Complexity  of  con- 
ditions render  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  develop- 
ment of  a  technique  enormous.  It  is  imaginable  they 
will  never  be  overcome.  But  our  choice  is  between  the 
development  of  a  technique  by  which  intelligence  will 
become  an  intervening  partner  and  a  continuation  of  a 
regime  of  accident,  waste  and  distress. 


PART  FOUR 

CONCLUSION 

CONDUCT  when  distributed  under  heads  like  habit,  im- 
pulse and  intelligence  gets  artificially  shredded.  In 
discussing  each  of  these  topics  we  have  run  into  the 
others.  We  conclude,  then,  with  an  attempt  to  gather 
together  some  outstanding  considerations  about  con- 
duct as  a  whole. 


The  foremost  conclusion  is  that  morals  has  to  do 
with  all  activity  into  which  alternative  possibilities 
enter.  For  wherever  they  enter  a  difference  between 
better  and  worse  arises.  Reflection  upon  action  means 
uncertainty  and  consequent  need  of  decision  as  to  which 
course  is  better.  The  better  is  the  good;  the  best  is 
not  better  than  the  good  but  is  simply  the  discovered 
good.  Comparative  and  superlative  degrees  are  only 
paths  to  the  positive  degree  of  action.  The  worse  or 
evil  is  a  rejected  good.  In  deliberation  and  before 
choice  no  evil  presents  itself  as  evil.  Until  it  is  rejected, 
it  is  a  competing  good.  After  rejection,  it  figures  not 
as  a  lesser  good,  but  as  the  bad  of  that  situation. 

278 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  279 

Actually  then  only  deliberate  action,  conduct  into 
which  reflective  choice  enters,  is  distinctively  moral,  for 
only  then  does  there  enter  the  question  of  better  and 
worse.  Yet  it  is  a  perilous  error  to  draw  a  hard  and 
fast  line  between  action  into  which  deliberation  and 
choice  enter  and  activity  due  to  impulse  and  matter-of- 
fact  habit.  One  of  the  consequences  of  action  is  to  in- 
volve us  in  predicaments  where  we  have  to  reflect  upon 
things  formerly  done  as  matter  of  course.  One  of  the 
chief  problems  of  our  dealings  with  others  is  to  induoe 
them  to  reflect  upon  affairs  which  they  usually  perform 
from  unreflective  habit.  On  the  other  hand,  every  re- 
flective choice  tends  to  relegate  some  conscious  issue 
into  a  deed  or  habit  henceforth  taken  for  granted  and 
not  thought  upon.  Potentially  therefore  every  and 
any  act  is  within  the  scope  of  morals,  being  a  candidate 
for  possible  judgment  with  respect  to  its  better-or- 
worse  quality.  It  thus  becomes  one  of  the  most  per- 
plexing problems  of  reflection  to  discover  just  how  far 
to  carry  it,  what  to  bring  under  examination  and  what 
to  leave  to  unscrutinized  habit.  Because  there  is  no 
final  recipe  by  which  to  decide  this  question  all  moral 
judgment  is  experimental  and  subject  to  revision  by  its 
issue. 

The  recognition  that  conduct  covers  every  act  that 
is  judged  with  reference  to  better  and  worse  and  that 
the  need  of  this  judgment  is  potentially  coextensive 
with  all  portions  of  conduct,  saves  us  from  the  mistake 
which  makes  morality  a  separate  department  of  life. 
Potentially  conduct  is  one  hundred  per  cent  of  our  acts. 


280          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

Hence  we  must  decline  to  admit  theories  which  identify 
morals  with  the  purification  of  motives,  edifying  char- 
acter, pursuing  remote  and  elusive  perfection,  obeying 
supernatural  command,  acknowledging  the  authority  of 
duty.  Such  notions  have  a  dual  bad  effect.  First  they 
get  in  the  way  of  observation  of  conditions  and  con- 
sequences. They  divert  thought  into  side  issues.  Sec- 
ondly, while  they  confer  a  morbid  exaggerated  quality 
upon  things  which  are  viewed  under  the  aspect  of  mo- 
rality, they  release  the  larger  part  of  the  acts  of  life 
from  serious,  that  is  moral,  survey.  Anxious  solicitude 
for  the  few  acts  which  are  deemed  moral  is  accompanied 
by  edicts  of  exemption  and  baths  of  immunity  for  most 
acts.  A  moral  moratorium  prevails  for  everyday 
affairs. 

When  we  observe  that  morals  is  at  home  wherever 
considerations  of  the  worse  and  better  are  involved,  we 
are  committed  to  noting  that  morality  is  a  continuing 
process  not  a  fixed  achievement.  Morals  means  growth 
of  conduct  in  meaning;  at  least  it  means  that  kind  of 
expansion  in  meaning  which  is  consequent  upon  obser- 
vations of  the  conditions  and  outcome  of  conduct.  It 
is  all  one  with  growing.  Growing  and  growth  are  the 
same  fact  expanded  in  actuality  or  telescoped  in 
thought.  In  the  largest  sense  of  the  word,  morals  is 
education.  It  is  learning  the  meaning  of  what  we  are 
about  and  employing  that  meaning  in  action.  The 
good,  satisfaction,  "  end,"  of  growth  of  present  action 
in  shades  and  scope  of  meaning  is  the  only  good  within 
our  control,  and  the  only  one,  accordingly,  for  which 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  281 

responsibility  exists.  The  rest  is  luck,  fortune.  And 
the  tragedy  of  the  moral  notions  most  insisted  upon  by 
the  morally  self-conscious  is  the  relegation  of  the  only 
good  which  can  fully  engage  thought,  namely  present 
meaning  of  action,  to  the  rank  of  an  incident  of  a  re- 
mote good,  whether  that  future  good  be  defined  as 
pleasure,  or  perfection,  or  salvation,  or  attainment  of 
virtuous  character. 

"  Present "  activity  is  not  a  sharp  narrow  knife- 
blade  in  time.  The  present  is  complex,  containing 
within  itself  a  multitude  of  habits  and  impulses.  It  is 
enduring,  a  course  of  action,  a  process  including  mem- 
ory, observation  and  foresight,  a  pressure  forward,  a 
glance  backward  and  a  look  outward.  It  is  of  moral 
moment  because  it  marks  a  transition  in  the  direction 
of  breadth  and  clarity  of  action  or  in  that  of  triviality 
and  confusion.  Progress  is  present  reconstruction  add- 
ing fullness  and  distinctness  of  meaning,  and  retrogres- 
sion is  a  present  slipping  away  of  significance,  deter- 
minations, grasp.  Those  who  hold  that  progress  can 
be  perceived  and  measured  only  by  reference  to  a  remote 
goal,  first  confuse  meaning  with  space,  and  then  treat 
spatial  position  as  absolute,  as  limiting  movement  in- 
stead of  being  bounded  in  and  by  movement.  There  are 
plenty  of  negative  elements,  due  to  conflict,  entangle- 
ment and  obscurity,  in  most  of  the  situations  of  life, 
and  we  do  not  require  a  revelation  of  some  supreme 
perfection  to  inform  us  whether  or  no  we  are  making 
headway  in  present  rectification.  We  move  on  from 
the  worse  and  into,  not  just  towards,  the  better,  which 


282         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

is  authenticated  not  by  comparison  with  the  foreign  but 
in  what  is  indigenous.  Unless  progress  is  a  present 
reconstructing,  it  is  nothing;  if  it  cannot  be  told  by 
qualities  belonging  to  the  movement  of  transition  it 
can  never  be  judged. 

Men  have  constructed  a  strange  dream-world  when 
they  have  supposed  that  without  a  fixed  ideal  of  a  re- 
mote good  to  inspire  them,  they  have  no  inducement  to 
get  relief  from  present  troubles,  no  desires  for  libera- 
tion from  what  oppresses  and  for  clearing-up  what 
confuses  present  action.  The  world  in  which  we  could 
get  enlightenment  and  instruction  about  the  direction 
in  which  we  are  moving  only  from  a  vague  conception  of 
an  unattainable  perfection  would  be  totally  unlike  our 
present  world.  Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil 
thereof.  Sufficient  it  is  to  stimulate  us  to  remedial 
action,  to  endeavor  in  order  to  convert  strife  into  har- 
mony, monotony  into  a  variegated  scene,  and  limitation 
into  expansion.  The  converting  is  progress,  the  only 
progress  conceivable  or  attainable  by  man.  Hence 
every  situation  has  its  own  measure  and  quality  of 
progress,  and  the  need  for  progress  is  recurrent,  con- 
stant. If  it  is  better  to  travel  than  to  arrive,  it  is  be- 
cause traveling  is  a  constant  arriving,  while  arrival 
that  precludes  further  traveling  is  most  easily  attained 
by  going  to  sleep  or  dying.  We  find  our  clews  to  di- 
rection in  the  projected  recollections  of  definite  ex- 
perienced goods  not  in  vague  anticipations,  even  when 
we  label  the  vagueness  perfection,  the  Ideal,  and  pro- 
ceed to  manipulate  its  definition  with  dry  dialectic  logic. 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  283 

Progress  means  increase  of  present  meaning,  which  in- 
volves multiplication  of  sensed  distinctions  as  well  as 
harmony,  unification.  This  statement  may,  perhaps,  be 
made  generally,  in  application  to  the  experience  of 
humanity.  If  history  shows  progress  it  can  hardly  be 
found  elsewhere  than  in  this  complication  and  extension 
of  the  significance  found  within  experience.  It  is  clear 
that  such  progress  brings  no  surcease,  no  immunity 
from  perplexity  and  trouble.  If  we  wished  to  trans- 
mute this  generalization  into  a  categorical  imperative 
we  should  say :  "  So  act  as  to  increase  the  meaning  of 
present  experience."  But  even  then  in  order  to  get  in- 
struction about  the  concrete  quality  of  such  increased 
meaning  we  should  have  to  run  away  from  the  law  and 
study  the  needs  and  alternative  possibilities  lying  with- 
in a  unique  and  localized  situation.  The  imperative, 
like  everything  absolute,  is  sterile.  Till  men  give  up 
the  search  for  a  general  formula  of  progress  they  will 
not  know  where  to  look  to  find  it. 

A  business  man  proceeds  by  comparing  today's  lia- 
bilities and  assets  with  yesterday's,  and  projects  plans 
for  tomorrow  by  a  study  of  the  movement  thus  indi- 
cated in  conjunction  with  study  of  the  conditions  of 
the  environment  now  existing.  It  is  not  otherwise  with 
the  business  of  living.  The  future  is  a  projection  of  the 
subject-matter  of  the  present,  a  projection  which  is  not 
arbitrary  in  the  extent  in  which  it  divines  the  movement 
of  the  moving  present.  The  physician  is  lost  who  would 
guide  his  activities  of  healing  by  building  up  a  picture 
of  perfect  health,  the  same  for  all  and  in  its  nature 


284          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

complete  and  self-enclosed  once  for  all.  He  employs 
what  he  has  discovered  about  actual  cases  of  good 
health  and  ill  health  and  their  causes  to  investigate  the 
present  ailing  individual,  so  as  to  further  his  recover- 
ing; recovering,  an  intrinsic  and  living  process  rather 
than  recovery,  which  is  comparative  and  static.  Moral 
theories,  which  however  have  not  remained  mere  theories 
but  which  have  found  their  way  into  the  opinions  of 
the  common  man,  have  reversed  the  situation  and  made 
the  present  subservient  to  a  rigid  yet  abstract  future. 

The  ethical  import  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is 
enormous.  But  its  import  has  been  misconstrued  be- 
cause the  doctrine  has  been  appropriated  by  the  very 
traditional  notions  which  in  truth  it  subverts.  It  has 
been  thought  that  the  doctrine  of  evolution  means  the 
complete  subordination  of  present  change  to  a  future 
goal.  It  has  been  constrained  to  teach  a  futile  dogma 
of  approximation,  instead  of  a  gospel  of  present 
growth.  The  usufruct  of  the  new  science  has  been 
seized  upon  by  the  old  tradition  of  fixed  and  external 
ends.  In  fact  evolution  means  continuity  of  change; 
and  the  fact  that  change  may  take  the  form  of  pres- 
ent growth  of  complexity  and  interaction.  Significant 
stages  in  change  are  found  not  in  access  of  fixity  of 
attainment  but  in  those  crises  in  which  a  seeming  fixity 
of  habits  gives  way  to  a  release  of  capacities  that  have 
not  previously  functioned:  in  times  that  is  of  readjust- 
ment and  redirection. 

No  matter  what  the  present  success  in  straightening 
out  difficulties  and  harmonizing  conflicts,  it  is  certain 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  285 

that  problems  will  recur  in  the  future  in  a  new  form 
or  on  a  different  plane.  Indeed  every  genuine  accom- 
plishment instead  of  winding  up  an  affair  and  enclos- 
ing it  as  a  jewel  in  a  casket  for  future  contemplation, 
complicates  the  practical  situation.  It  effects  a  new 
distribution  of  energies  which  have  henceforth  to  be 
employed  in  ways  for  which  past  experience  gives  no 
exact  instruction.  Every  important  satisfaction  of  an 
old  want  creates  a  new  one ;  and  this  new  one  has  to 
enter  upon  an  experimental  adventure  to  find  its  sat- 
isfaction. From  the  side  of  what  has  gone  before 
achievement  settles  something.  From  the  side  of  what 
comes  after,  it  complicates,  introducing  new  problems, 
unsettling  factors.  There  is  something  pitifully  juven- 
ile in  the  idea  that  "  evolution,"  progress,  means  a 
definite  sum  of  accomplishment  which  will  forever  stay 
done,  and  which  by  an  exact  amount  lessens  the  amount 
still  to  be  done,  disposing  once  and  for  all  of  just  so 
many  perplexities  and  advancing  us  just  so  far  on  our 
road  to  a  final  stable  and  unperplexed  goal.  Yet  the 
typical  nineteenth  century,  mid-victorian  conception  of 
evolution  was  precisely  a  formulation  of  such  a  consum- 
mate juvenilism. 

If  the  true  ideal  is  that  of  a  stable  condition  free 
from  conflict  and  disturbance,  then  there  are  a  number 
of  1heorio>  whose  claims  are  superior  to  those  of  the 
popular  doctrine  of  evolution.  Logic  points  rather  in 
the  direction  of  Rousseau  and  Tolstoi  who  would  recur 
to  some  primitive  simplicity,  who  would  return  from 
complicated  and  troubled  civilization  to  a  state  of  na- 


286          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ture.  For  certainly  progress  in  civilization  has  not  only 
meant  increase  in  the  scope  and  intricacy  of  problems 
to  be  dealt  with,  but  it  entails  increasing  instability. 
For  in  multiplying  wants,  instruments  and  possibilities, 
it  increases  the  variety  of  forces  which  enter  into  re- 
lations with  one  another  and  which  have  to  be  intelli- 
gently directed.  Or  again,  Stoic  indifference  or  Bud- 
dhist calm  have  greater  claims.  For,  it  may  be  argued, 
since  all  objective  achievement  only  complicates  the  sit- 
uation, the  victory  of  a  final  stability  can  be  secured 
only  by  renunciation  of  desire.  Since  every  satisfac- 
tion of  desire  increases  force,  and  this  in  turn  creates 
new  desires,  withdrawal  into  an  inner  passionless  state, 
indifference  to  action  and  attainment,  is  the  sole  road 
to  possession  of  the  eternal,  stable  and  final  reality. 
Again,  from  the  standpoint  of  definite  approximation 
to  an  ultimate  goal,  the  balance  falls  heavily  on  the  side 
of  pessimism.  The  more  striving  the  more  attainments, 
perhaps;  but  also  assuredly  the  more  needs  and  the 
more  disappointments.  The  more  we  do  and  the  more 
we  accomplish,  the  more  the  end  is  vanity  and  vexa- 
tion. From  the  standpoint  of  attainment  of  good  that 
stays  put,  that  constitutes  a  definite  sum  performed 
which  lessens  the  amount  of  effort  required  in  order  to 
reach  the  ultimate  goal  of  final  good,  progress  is  an 
illusion.  But  we  are  looking  for  it  in  the  wrong  place. 
The  world  war  is  a  bitter  commentary  on  the  nineteenth 
century  misconception  of  moral  achievement — a  mis- 
conception however  which  it  only  inherited  from  the 
traditional  theory  of  fixed  ends,  attempting  to  bolster 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  287 

up  that  doctrine  with  aid  from  the  "  scientific  "  theory 
of  evolution.  The  doctrine  of  progress  is  not  yet  bank- 
rupt. The  bankruptcy  of  the  notion  of  fixed  goods  to 
be  attained  and  stably  possessed  may  possibly  be  the 
means  of  turning  the  mind  of  man  to  a  tenable  theory 
of  progress — to  attention  to  present  troubles  and  pos- 
sibilities. 

Adherents  of  the  idea  that  betterment,  growth  in 
goodness,  consists  in  approximation  to  an  exhaustive, 
stable,  immutable  end  or  good,  have  been  compelled  to 
recognize  the  truth  that  in  fact  we  envisage  the  good 
in  specific  terms  that  are  relative  to  existing  needs,  and 
that  the  attainment  of  every  specific  good  merges  in- 
sensibly into  a  new  condition  of  maladjustment  with  its 
need  of  a  new  end  and  a  renewed  effort.  But  they 
have  elaborated  an  ingenious  dialectical  theory  to  ac- 
count for  the  facts  while  maintaining  their  theory  in- 
tact. The  goal,  the  ideal,  is  infinite ;  man  is  finite,  sub- 
ject to  conditions  imposed  by  space  and  time.  The 
specific  character  of  the  ends  which  man  entertains 
and  of  the  satisfaction  he  achieves  is  due  therefore 
precisely  to  his  empirical  and  finite  nature  in  its  con- 
trast with  the  infinite  and  complete  character  of  the 
true  reality,  the  end.  Consequently  when  man  reaches 
what  he  had  taken  to  be  the  destination  of  his  journey 
he  finds  that  he  has  only  gone  a  piece  on  the  road.  In- 
finite vistas  still  stretch  before  him.  Again  he  sets  his 
mark  a  little  way  further  ahead,  and  again  when  he 
reaches  the  station  set,  he  finds  the  road  opening  before 
him  in  unexpected  ways,  and  sees  new  distant  objects 


288          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

beckoning  him  forward.  Such  is  the  popular  doctrine. 
By  some  strange  perversion  this  theory  passes  for 
moral  idealism.  An  office  of  inspiration  and  guidance  is 
attributed  to  the  thought  of  the  goal  of  ultimate  com- 
pleteness or  perfection.  As  matter  of  fact,  the  idea 
sincerely  held  brings  discouragement  and  despair  not 
inspiration  or  hopefulness.  There  is  something  either 
ludicrous  or  tragic  in  the  notion  that  inspiration  to 
continued  progress  is  had  in  telling  man  that  no  matter 
what  he  does  or  what  he  achieves,  the  outcome  is  negli- 
gible in  comparison  with  what  he  set  out  to  achieve,  that 
every  endeavor  he  makes  is  bound  to  turn  out  a  failure 
compared  with  what  should  be  done,  that  every  at- 
tained satisfaction  is  only  forever  bound  to  be  only  a 
disappointment.  The  honest  conclusion  is  pessimism. 
All  is  vexation,  and  the  greater  the  effort  the  greater 
the  vexation.  But  the  fact  is  that  it  is  not  the  nega- 
tive aspect  of  an  outcome,  its  failure  to  reach  infinity, 
which  renews  courage  and  hope.  Positive  attainment, 
actual  enrichment  of  meaning  and  powers  opens  new 
vistas  and  sets  new  tasks,  creates  new  aims  and  stim- 
ulates new  efforts.  The  facts  are  not  such  as  to  yield 
unthinking  optimism  and  consolation ;  for  they  render 
it  impossible  to  rest  upon  attained  goods.  New  strug- 
gles and  failures  are  inevitable.  The  total  scene  of 
action  remains  as  before,  only  for  us  more  complex, 
and  more  subtly  unstable.  But  this  very  situation  is  a 
consequence  of  expansion,  not  of  failures  of  power,  and 
when  grasped  and  admitted  it  is  a  challenge  to  intelli- 
gence. Instruction  in  what  to  do  next  can  never  come 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  289 

from  an  infinite  goal,  which  for  us  is  bound  to  be  empty. 
It  can  be  derived  only  from  study  of  the  deficiencies, 
irregularities  and  possibilities  of  the  actual  situation. 
In  any  case,  however,  arguments  about  pessimism  and 
optimism  based  upon  considerations  regarding  fixed 
attainment  of  good  and  evil  are  mainly  literary  in  qual- 
ity. Man  continues  to  live  because  he  is  a  living  crea- 
ture not  because  reason  convinces  him  of  the  certainty 
or  probability  of  future  satisfactions  and  achievements. 
He  is  instinct  with  activities  that  carry  him  on.  Indi- 
viduals here  and  there  cave  in,  and  most  individuals 
sag,  withdraw  and  seek  refuge  at  this  and  that  point. 
But  man  as  man  still  has  the  dumb  pluck  of  the  animal. 
He  has  endurance,  hope,  curiosity,  eagerness,  love  of 
action.  These  traits  belong  to  him  by  structure,  not  by 
taking  thought.  Memory  of  past  and  foresight  of  fu- 
ture convert  dumbness  to  some  degree  of  articulate- 
ness.  They  illumine  curiosity  and  steady  courage. 
Then  when  the  future  arrives  with  its  inevitable  dis- 
appointments as  well  as  fulfilments,  and  with  new 
sources  of  trouble,  failure  loses  something  of  its  fatal- 
ity, and  suffering  yields  fruit  of  instruction  not  of  bit- 
terness. Humility  is  more  demanded  at  our  moments 
of  triumph  than  at  those  of  failure.  For  humility  is 
not  a  caddish  self-depreciation.  It  is  the  sense  of  our 
slight  inability  even  with  our  best  intelligence  and  ef- 
fort to  command  events;  a  sense  of  our  dependence 
upon  forces  that  go  their  way  without  our  wish  and 
plan.  Its  purport  is  not  to  relax  effort  but  to  make 
us  prize  every  opportunity  of  present  growth.  In 


290          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

morals,  the  infinitive  and  the  imperative  develop  from 
the  participle,  present  tense.  Perfection  means  per- 
fecting, fulfilment,  fulfilling,  and  the  good  is  now  or 
never. 

Idealistic  philosophies,  those  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  Spi- 
noza, like  the  hypothesis  now  offered,  have  found  the 
good  in  meanings  belonging  to  a  conscious  life,  a  life 
of  reason,  not  in  external  achievement.  Like  it,  they 
have  exalted  the  place  of  intelligence  in  securing  ful- 
filment of  conscious  life.  These  theories  have  at  least 
not  subordinated  conscious  life  to  external  obedience, 
not  thought  of  virtue  as  something  different  from  ex- 
cellence of  life.  But  they  set  up  a  transcendental  mean- 
ing and  reason,  remote  from  present  experience  and 
opposed  to  it;  or  they  insist  upon  a  special  form  of 
meaning  and  consciousness  to  be  attained  by  peculiar 
modes  of  knowledge  inaccessible  to  the  common  man, 
involving  not  continuous  reconstruction  of  ordinary 
experience,  but  its  wholesale  reversal.  They  have 
treated  regeneration,  change  of  heart,  as  wholesale  and 
self-enclosed,  not  as  continuous. 

The  utilitarians  also  made  good  and  evil,  right  and 
wrong,  matters  of  conscious  experience.  In  addition 
they  brought  them  down  to  earth,  to  everyday  experi- 
ence. They  strove  to  humanize  other-worldly  goods. 
But  they  retained  the  notion  that  the  good  is  future, 
and  hence  outside  the  meaning  of  present  activity.  In 
so  far  it  is  sporadic,  exceptional,  subject  to  accident, 
passive,  an  enjoyment  not  a  joy,  something  hit  upon, 
not  a  fulfilling.  The  future  end  is  for  them  not  to 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  291 

remote  from  present  action  as  the  Platonic  realm  of 
ideals,  or  as  the  Aristotelian  rational  thought,  or  the 
Christian  heaven,  or  Spinoza's  conception  of  the  uni- 
versal whole.  But  still  it  is  separate  in  principle  and 
in  fact  from  present  activity.  The  next  step  is  to  iden- 
tify the  sought  for  good  with  the  meaning  of  our 
impulses  and  our  habits,  and  the  specific  moral  good 
or  virtue  with  learning  this  meaning,  a  learning  that 
takes  us  back  not  into  an  isolated  self  but  out  into  the 
open-air  world  of  objects  and  social  ties,  terminating 
in  an  increment  of  present  significance. 

Doubtless  there  are  those  who  will  think  that  we 
thus  escape  from  remote  and  external  ends  only  to  fall 
into  an  Epicureanism  which  teaches  us  to  subordinate 
everything  else  to  present  satisfactions.  The  hypothe- 
sis preferred  may  seem  to  some  to  advise  a  subjective, 
self-centered  life  of  intensified  consciousness,  an  esthet- 
ically  dilettante  type  of  egoism.  For  is  not  its  lesson 
that  we  should  concentrate  attention,  each  upon  the 
consciousness  accompanying  his  action  so  as  to  refine 
and  develop  it?  Is  not  this,  like  all  subjective  morals, 
an  anti-social  doctrine,  instructing  us  to  subordinate 
the  objective  consequences  of  our  acts,  those  which  pro- 
mote the  welfare  of  others,  to  an  enrichment  of  our 
private  conscious  lives? 

It  can  hardly  be  denied  that  as  compared  with  the 
dogmas  against  which  it  reacted  there  is  an  element  of 
truth  in  Epicureanism.  It  strove  to  center  attention 
upon  what  is  actually  within  control  and  to  find  the 
good  in  the  present  instead  of  in  a  contingent  uncer- 


292          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

tain  future.  The  trouble  with  it  lies  in  its  account  of 
present  good.  It  failed  to  connect  this  good  with  the 
full  reach  of  activities.  It  contemplated  good  of  with- 
drawal rather  than  of  active  participation.  That  is 
to  say,  the  objection  to  Epicureanism  lies  in  its  con- 
ception of  what  constitutes  present  good,  not  in  its 
emphasis  upon  satisfaction  as  at  present.  The  same  re- 
mark may  be  made  about  every  theory  which  recognizes 
the  individual  self.  If  any  such  theory  is  objection- 
able, the  objection  is  against  the  character  or  quality 
assigned  to  the  self.  Of  course  an  individual  is  the 
bearer  or  carrier  of  experience.  What  of  that?  Every- 
thing depends  upon  the  kind  of  experience  that  centers 
in  him.  Not  the  residence  of  experience  counts,  but  its 
contents,  what's  in  the  house.  The  center  is  not  in  the 
abstract  amenable  to  our  control,  but  what  gathers 
about  it  is  our  affair.  We  can't  help  being  individual 
selves,  each  one  of  us.  If  selfhood  as  such  is  a  bad 
thing,  the  blame  lies  not  with  the  self  but  with  the  uni- 
verse, with  providence.  But  in  fact  the  distinction  be- 
tween a  selfishness  with  which  we  find  fault  and  an 
unselfishness  which  we  esteem  is  found  in  the  quality 
of  the  activities  which  proceed  from  and  enter  into  the 
self,  according  as  they  are  contractive,  exclusive,  or 
expansive,  outreaching.  Meaning  exists  for  some  self, 
but  this  truistic  fact  doesn't  fix  the  quality  of  any  par- 
ticular meaning.  It  may  be  such  as  to  make  the  self 
small,  or  such  as  to  exalt  and  dignify  the  self.  It  is 
as  impertinent  to  decry  the  worth  of  experience  be- 
cause it  is  connected  with  a  self  as  it  is  fantastic  to 


THE  GOOD  OF  ACTIVITY  293 

idealize  personality  just  as  personality  aside  from  the 
question  what  sort  of  a  person  one  is. 

Other  persons  are  selves  too.  If  one's  own  present 
experience  is  to  be  depreciated  in  its  meaning  because 
it  centers  in  a  self,  why  act  for  the  welfare  of  others? 
Selfishness  for  selfishness,  one  is  as  good  as  another; 
our  own  is  worth  as  much  as  another's.  But  the  rec- 
ognition that  good  is  always  found  in  a  present  growth 
of  significance  in  activity  protects  us  from  thinking 
that  welfare  can  consist  in  a  soup-kitchen  happiness, 
in  pleasures  we  can  confer  upon  others  from  without. 
It  shows  that  good  is  the  same  in  quality  wherever  it  is 
found,  whether  in  some  other  self  or  in  one's  own.  An 
activity  has  meaning  in  the  degree  in  which  it  establishes 
and  acknowledges  variety  and  intimacy  of  connections. 
As  long  as  any  social  impulse  endures,  so  long  an  activ- 
ity that  shuts  itself  off  will  bring  inward  dissatisfaction 
and  entail  a  struggle  for  compensatory  goods,  no  mat- 
ter what  pleasures  or  external  successes  acclaim  its 
course. 

To  say  that  the  welfare  of  others,  like  our  own, 
consists  in  a  widening  and  deepening  of  the  perceptions 
that  give  activity  its  meaning,  in  an  educative  growth, 
is  to  set  forth  a  proposition  of  political  import.  To 
"  make  others  happy  "  except  through  liberating  their 
powers  and  engaging  them  in  activities  that  enlarge 
the  meaning  of  life  is  to  harm  them  and  to  indulge 
ourselves  under  cover  of  exercising  a  special  virtue. 
Our  moral  measure  for  estimating  any  existing  ar- 
rangement or  any  proposed  reform  is  its  effect  upon 


294          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

impulse  and  habits.  Does  it  liberate  or  suppress,  ossify 
or  render  flexible,  divide  or  unify  interest?  Is  per- 
ception quickened  or  dulled?  Is  memory  made  apt  and 
extensive  or  narrow  and  diffusely  irrelevant?  Is  imag- 
ination diverted  to  fantasy  and  compensatory  dreams, 
or  does  it  add  fertility  to  life?  Is  thought  creative  or 
pushed  one  side  into  pedantic  specialisms?  There  is  a 
sense  in  which  to  set  up  social  welfare  as  an  end  of 
action  only  promotes  an  offensive  condescension,  a 
harsh  interference,  or  an  oleaginous  display  of  com- 
placent kindliness.  It  always  tends  in  this  direction 
when  it  is  aimed  at  giving  happiness  to  others 
directly,  that  is,  as  we  can  hand  a  physical  thing  to 
another.  To  foster  conditions  that  widen  the  horizon 
of  others  and  give  them  command  of  their  own  powers, 
so  that  they  can  find  their  own  happiness  in  their  own 
fashion,  is  the  way  of  "  social  "  action.  Otherwise  the 
prayer  of  a  freeman  would  be  to  be  left  alone,  and  to  be 
delivered,  above  all,  from  "  reformers  "  and  "  kind  " 
people. 


II 


Since  morals  is  concerned  with  conduct,  it  grows  out 
of  specific  empirical  facts.  Almost  all  influential  moral 
theories,  with  the  exception  of  the  utilitarian,  have  re- 
fused to  admit  this  idea.  For  Christendom  as  a  whole, 
morality  has  been  connected  with  supernatural  com- 
mands, rewards  and  penalties.  Those  who  have  es- 
caped this  superstition  have  contented  themselves  with 
converting  the  difference  between  this  world  and  the 
next  into  a  distinction  between  the  actual  and  the  ideal, 
what  is  and  what  should  be.  The  actual  world  has  not 
been  surrendered  to  the  devil  in  name,  but  it  is  treated 
as  a  display  of  physical  forces  incapable  of  generating 
moral  values.  Consequently,  moral  considerations  must 
be  introduced  from  above.  Human  nature  may  not  be 
officially  declared  to  be  infected  because  of  some  aborig- 
inal sin,  but  it  is  said  to  be  sensuous,  impulsive,  sub- 
jected to  necessity,  while  natural  intelligence  is  such 
that  it  cannot  rise  above  a  reckoning  of  private  ex- 
pediency. 

But  in  fact  morals  is  the  most  humane  of  all  sub- 
jects. It  is  that  which  is  closest  to  human  nature;  it 
is  ineradicably  empirical,  not  theological  nor  meta- 
physical nor  mathematical.  Since  it  directly  concerns 
human  nature,  everything  that  can  be  known  of  the 
human  mind  and  body  in  physiology,  medicine,  anthro- 

295 


296          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

pology,  and  psychology  is  pertinent  to  moral  inquiry. 
Human  nature  exists  and  operates  in  an  environment. 
And  it  is  not  "  in  "  that  environment  as  coins  are  in  a 
box,  but  as  a  plant  is  in  the  sunlight  and  soil.  It  is 
of  them,  continuous  with  their  energies,  dependent  upon 
their  support,  capable  of  increase  only  as  it  utilizes 
them,  and  as  it  gradually  rebuilds  from  their  crude  in- 
difference an  environment  genially  civilized.  Hence 
physics,  chemistry,  history,  statistics,  engineering  sci- 
ence, are  a  part  of  disciplined  moral  knowledge  so  far 
as  they  enable  us  to  understand  the  conditions  and 
agencies  through  which  man  lives,  and  on  account  of 
which  he  forms  and  executes  his  plans.  Moral  science 
is  not  something  with  a  separate  province.  It  is  phys- 
ical, biological  and  historic  knowledge  placed  in  a 
human  context  where  it  will  illuminate  and  guide  the 
activities  of  men. 

The  path  of  truth  is  narrow  and  straitened.  It  is 
only  too  easy  to  wander  beyond  the  course  from  this 
side  to  that.  In  a  reaction  from  that  error  which  has 
made  morals  fanatic  or  fantastic,  sentimental  or 
authoritative  by  severing  them  from  actual  facts  and 
forces,  theorists  have  gone  to  the  other  extreme.  They 
have  insisted  that  natural  laws  are  themselves  moral 
laws,  so  that  it  remains,  after  noting  them,  only  to  con- 
form to  them.  This  doctrine  of  accord  with  nature 
has  usually  marked  a  transition  period.  When  myth- 
ology is  dying  in  its  open  forms,  and  when  social  life  is 
so  disturbed  that  custom  and  tradition  fail  to  supply 
their  wonted  control,  men  resort  to  Nature  as  a  norm. 


MORALS  ARE  HUMAN  297 

They  apply  to  Nature  all  the  eulogistic  predicates  pre- 
viously associated  with  divine  law;  or  natural  law  is 
conceived  of  as  the  only  true  divine  law.  This  hap- 
pened in  one  form  in  Stoicism.  It  happened  in  another 
form  in  the  deism  of  the  eighteenth  century  with  its 
notion  of  a  benevolent,  harmonious,  wholly  rational 
order  of  Nature. 

In  our  time  this  notion  has  been  perpetuated  in  con- 
nection with  a  laissez-faire  social  philosophy  and  the 
theory  of  evolution.  Human  intelligence  is  thought  to 
mark  an  artificial  interference  if  it  does  more  than  reg- 
ister fixed  natural  laws  as  rules  of  human  action.  The 
process  of  natural  evolution  is  conceived  as  the  exact 
model  of  human  endeavor.  The  two  ideas  met  in  Spen- 
cer. To  the  "  enlightened  "  of  a  former  generation, 
Spencer's  evolutionary  philosophy  seemed  to  afford  a 
scientific  sanction  for  the  necessity  of  moral  progress, 
while  it  also  proved,  up  to  the  hilt,  the  futility  of  de- 
liberate "  interference  "  with  the  benevolent  operations 
of  nature.  The  idea  of  justice  was  identified  with  the 
law  of  cause  and  effect.  Transgression  of  natural  law 
wrought  in  the  struggle  for  existence  its  own  penalty  of 
elimination,  and  conformity  with  it  brought  the  reward 
of  increased  vitality  and  happiness.  By  this  process 
egoistic  desire  is  gradually  coming  into  harmony  with 
the  necessity  of  the  environment,  till  at  last  the  indi- 
vidual automatically  finds  happiness  in  doing  what  the 
natural  and  social  environment  demands,  and  serves 
himself  in  serving  others.  From  this  point  of  view, 
earlier  "  scientific  "  philosophers  made  a  mistake,  but 


298          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

only  the  mistake  of  anticipating  the  date  of  complete 
natural  harmony.  All  that  reason  can  do  is  to  acknowl- 
edge the  evolutionary  forces,  and  thereby  refrain  from 
retarding  the  arrival  of  the  happy  day  of  perfect  har- 
mony. Meantime  justice  demands  that  the  weak  and 
ignorant  suffer  the  effect  of  violation  of  natural  law, 
while  the  wise  and  able  reap  the  rewards  of  their 
superiority. 

The  fundamental  defect  of  such  views  is  that  they 
fail  to  see  the  difference  made  in  conditions  and  ener- 
gies by  perception  of  them.  It  is  the  first  business  of 
mind  to  be  "  realistic,"  to  see  things  "  as  they  are." 
If,  for  example,  biology  can  give  us  knowledge  of  the 
causes  of  competency  and  incompetency,  strength  and 
weakness,  that  knowledge  is  all  to  the  good.  A  non- 
sentimental  morals  will  seek  for  all  the  instruction  nat- 
ural science  can  give  concerning  the  biological  condi- 
tions and  consequences  of  inferiority  and  superiority. 
|  But  knowledge  of  facts  does  not  entail  conformity  and 
I  acquiescence^  The  contrary  i^  the  case.  Perception 
(  of  things  as  they  are  is  but  a  stage  in  the  process  of 
making  them  different.  They  have  already  begun  to  Fe 
different  in  beingknown,  for  by  that  fact  they  enter 
into  a  different  context,  a  context  of  foresight  and 
judgment  of  better  and  worse.  A  false  psychology  of 
a  separate  realm  of  consciousness  is  the  only  reason 
this  fact  is  not  generally  acknowledged.  Morality  re- 
sides not  in  perception  of  fact,  but  in  the  use  made  of 
its  perception.  It  is  a  monstrous  assumption  that 
its  sole  use  is  to  utter  benedictions  upon  fact  and  its 


MORALS  ARE  HUMAN  299 

offspring.  It  is  the  part  of  intelligence  to  tell  when 
to  use  the  fact  to  conform  and  perpetuate,  and  when 
to  use  it  to  vary  conditions  and  consequences. 

It  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  knowledge  about  the  con- 
nection between  inferiority  and  its  consequences  pre- 
scribes adherence  to  that  connection.  It  is  like  sup- 
posing that  knowledge  of  the  connection  between  ma- 
laria and  mosquitoes  enjoins  breeding  mosquitoes.  The 
fact  when  it  is  known  enters  into  a  new  environment. 
Without  ceasing  to  belong  to  the  physical  environment 
it  enters  _also  into  a  mediumof  human  activities,  of 
desires  and  aversions,  habits  and  instincts.  It  thereby 
gains  new  potencies,  new  capacities.  Gunpowder  in 
water  does  not  act  the  same  as  gunpowder  next  a  flame. 
A  fact  known  does  not  operate  the  same  as  a  fact  un- 
.perceived.  When  it  is  known  it  comes  into  contact  witH 
the  flame  of  desire  and  the  cold  bath  of  antipathy, 
Knowledge  o£  the  conditions  that  breed  incapacity  may 
fit  into  some  desire  to  maintain  others  in  that  state 
while  averting  it  for  one's  self.  Or  it  may  fall  in  with 
a  character  which  finds  itself  blocked  by  such  facts,  and 
therefore  strives  to  use  knowledge  of  causes  to  make  a 
change  in  effects.  Moralitjjjegins  at  this  Egint^  of  use 
of  knr>wjprLgp  nf  natural  law,  a  use  varying  with  the 
active  system  of  dispositions  an^TBesires.  Intelligent 
action  is  not  concerned  with  thelbare  consequences  of 
the  thing  known,  but  with  consequences  to  be  brought 
into  existence  by  action  conditioned  on  the  knowledge. 
Men  may  use  their  knowledge  to  induce  conformity  or 
exaggeration,  or  to  effect  change  and  abolition  of  con- 


800          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ditions.     The  quality  of  these  consequences  determines 
the  question  of  better  or  worse. 

The  exaggeration  of  the  harmony  attributed  to  Na- 
ture aroused  men  to  note  its  disharmonies.  An  optimis- 
tic view  of  natural  benevolence  was  followed  by  a  more 
honest,  less  romantic  view  of  struggle  and  conflict  in 
nature.  After  Helvetius  and  Bentham  came  Malthus 
and  Darwin.  The  problem  of  morals  is  the  problem  of 
desire  and  intelligence.  What  is  to  be  done  with  these 
facts  of  disharmony  and  conflict?  After  we  have  dis- 
covered the  place  and  consequences  of  conflict  in  na- 
ture, we  have  still  to  discover  its  place  and  working  in 
human  need  and  thought.  What  is  its  office,  its  function, 
its  possibility,  or  use?  In  general,  the  answer  is  simple. 
Conflict  is  the  gadfly  of  thought.  It  stirs  us  to  ob- 
servation and  memory.  It  instigates  to  invention.  It 
shocks  us  out  of  sheep-like  passivity,  and  sets  us  at 
noting  and  contriving.  Not  that  it  always  effects  this 
result ;  but  that  conflict  is  a  sine  qua  non  of  reflection 
and  ingenuity.  When  this  possibility  of  making  use  of 
conflict  has  once  been  noted,  it  is  possible  to  utilize  it 
systematically  to  substitute  the  arbitration  of  mind  for 
that  of  brutal  attack  and  brute  collapse.  But  the 
tendency  to  take  natural  law  for  a  norm  of  action  which 
the  supposedly  scientific  have  inherited  from  eighteenth 
century  rationalism  leads  to  an  idealization  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  conflict  itself.  Its  office  in  promoting  progress 
through  arousing  intelligence  is  overlooked,  and  it  is 
erected  into  the  generator  of  progress.  Karl  Marx 
borrowed  from  the  dialectic  of  Hegel  the  idea  of  the 


MORALS  ARE  HUMAN  301 

necessity  of  a  negative  element,  of  opposition,  for  ad- 
vance. He  projected  it  into  social  affairs  and  reached 
the  conclusion  that  all  social  development  comes  from 
conflict  between  classes,  and  that  therefore  class-war- 
fare is  to  be  cultivated.  Hence  a  supposedly  scientific 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  social  evolution  preaches  social 
hostility  as  the  road  to  social  harmony.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  a  more  striking  instance  of  what  happens 
when  natural  events  are  given  a  social  and  practical 
sanctification.  Darwinism  has  been  similarly  used 
to  justify  war  and  the  brutalities  of  competition  for 
wealth  and  power. 

The  excuse,  the  provocation,  though  not  the  justifica- 
tion for  such  a  doctrine  is  found  in  the  actions  of  those 
who  say  peace,  peace,  when  there  is  no  peace,  who  refuse 
to  recognize  facts  as  they  are,  who  proclaim  a  natural 
harmony  of  wealth  and  merit,  of  capital  and  labor,  and 
the  natural  justice,  in  the  main,  of  existing  conditions. 
There  is  something  horrible,  something  that  makrs  one 
fear  for  civilization,  in  denunciations  of  class-differ- 
ences and  class  struggles  which  proceed  from  a  class  in 
power,  one  that  is  seizing  every  means,  even  to  a  mo- 
nopoly of  moral  ideals,  to  carry  on  its  struggle  for 
class-power.  This  class  adds  hypocrisy  to  conflict  and 
brings  all  idealism  into  disrepute.  It  does  everything 
which  ingenuity  and  prestige  can  do  to  give  color  to 
the  assertions  of  those  who  say  that  all  moral  consid- 
erations are  irrelevant,  and  that  the  issue  is  one  of 
brute  trial  of  forces  between  this  side  and  that.  The 
alternative,  here  as  elsewhere,  is  not  between  denying 


802          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

facts  in  behalf  of  something  termed  moral  ideals  and 
accepting  facts  as  final.  There  remains  the  possibil- 
ity of  recognizing  facts  and  using  them  as  a  challenge 
to  intelligence  to  modify  the  environment  and  change 
habits. 


Ill 


The  place  of  natural  fact  and  law  in  morals  brings  us 
to  the  problem  of  freedom.  We  are  told  that  seriously 
to  import  empirical  facts  into  morals  is  equivalent  to 
an  abrogation  of  freedom.  Facts  and  laws  mean  ne- 
cessity we  are  told.  The  way  to  freedom  is  to  turn  our 
back  upon  them  and  take  flight  to  a  separate  ideal 
realm.  Even  if  the  flight  could  be  successfully  accom- 
plished, the  efficacy  of  the  prescription  may  be 
doubted.  For  we  need  freedom  in  and  among 
actual  events,  not  apart  from  them.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  therefore  that  there  remains  an  alter- 
native ;  that  the  road  to  freedom  may  be  found  in  that 
knowledge  of  facts  which  enables  us  to  employ  them  in 
connection  with  desires  and  aims.  A  physician  or  en- 
gineer is  free  in  his  thought  ancfhis  action  in  the  degree 
in  which  he  knows  what  he  deals  with.  Possibly  we  find 
here  the  key  to  any  freedom. 

What  men  have  esteemed  and  fought  for  in  the  name 
of  liberty  is  varied  and  complex — but  certainly  it  has 
never  been  a  metaphysical  freedom  of  will.  It  seems 
to  contain  three  elements  of  importance*  though  on 
their  face  not  all  of  them  are  directly  compatible  with 
one  another,  (i)  It  includes  efficiency  in  action,  abil- 
ity to  carry  out  plans,  the  absence  of  cramping  and 
thwarting  obstacles,  (ii)  It  also  includes  capacity  to 

303 


If" 


304          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

vary  plans,  to  change  the~cours£_of  action,  to  experi- 
ence novelties.  And  again  (iii)  it  signifies  the  power  of 
desire  and  choice  to  be  factors  in  events. 

Few  men  would  purchase  even  a  high  amount  of  ef- 
ficient action  along  definite  lines  at  the  price  of  monot- 
ony, or  if  success  in  action  were  bought  by  all  abandon- 
ment of  personal  preference.  They  would  probably  feel 
that  a  more  precious  freedom  was  possessed  in  a  life 
of  ill-assured  objective  achievement  that  contained 
undertaking  of  risks,  adventuring  in  new  fields,  a  pit- 
ting of  personal  choice  against  the  odds  of  events,  and 
a  mixture  of  success  and  failures,  provided  choice  had 
a  career.  The  slave  is  a  man  who  executes  the  wish  of 
others,  one  doomed  to  act  along  lines  predetermined  to 
regularity.  Thogewhojiave  defined  freedom  as  ability 
to  act  have  unconsciouslyassumecTthat  this  ability  is 
exercised  in^  accord  with  desire,  andjthat  Jts  operation 
introduces  jth£_agent  into  fields  previously  unexplored^ 
Hence  the  conception  of  freedom  as  involving  three 
factors. 

Yet  efficiency  in  execution  cannot  be  ignored.  To  say 
that  a  man  is  free  to  choose  to  walk  while  the  only  walk 
he  can  take  will  lead  him  over  a  precipice  is  to  strain 
words  as  well  as  facts.  Intelligence^  is  the  key-^ofree- 
dom  in  act.  We  are  likely  to  be  able  to  go  ahead  pros- 
perously in  the  degree  in  which  we  have  consulted  con- 
ditions and  formed  a  plan  which  enlists  their  consent- 
ing cooperation.  The  gratuitous  help  of  unforeseen 
circumstance  we  cannot  afford  to  despise.  Luck,  bad 
if  not  good,  will  always  be  with  us.  But  it  has  a  way 


WHAT  IS  FREEDOM?  SOS 

of  favoring  the  intelligent  and  showing  its  back  to  the 
stupid.  And  the  gifts  of  fortune  when  they  come  are 
fleeting  except  when  they  are  made  taut  by  intelligent 
adaptation  of  conditions.  In  neutral  and  adverse  cir- 
cumstances, study  and  foresight  are  the  only  roads  to 
unimpeded  action.  Insistence  upon  a  metaphysical 
freedom  of  will  is  generally  at  its  most  strident  pitch 
with  those  who  despise  knowledge  of  matters-of-fact. 
They  pay  for  their  contempt  by  halting  and  confined 
action.  Glorification  of  freedom  in  general  at  the  ex- 
pense of  positive  abilities  in  particular  has  often  char- 
acterized the  official  creed  of  historic  liberalism.  Its 
outward  sign  is  the  separation  of  politics  and  law  from 
economics.  Much  of  what  is  called  the  "  individual- 
ism "  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  has  in  truth  little 
to  do  with  the  nature  of  individuals.  It  goes  back  to  a 
metaphysics  which  held  that  harmony  between  man  and 
nature  can  be  taken  for  granted,  if  once  certain  arti- 
ficial restrictions  upon  man  are  removed.  Hence  it 
neglected  the  necessity  of  studying  and  regulating  in- 
dustrial conditions  so  that  a  nominal  freedom  can 
be  made  an  actuality.  Find  a  man  who  believes  that  all 
men  need  is  freedom  from  oppressive  legal  and  political 
measures,  and  you  have  found  a  man  who,  unless  he  is 
merely  obstinately  maintaining  his  own  private  privi- 
leges, carries  at  the  back  of  his  head  some  heritage  of 
the  metaphysical  doctrine  of  free-will,  plus  an  opti- 
mistic confidence  in  natural  harmony.  He  needs  a  phi- 
losophy that  recognizes  the  objective  character  of  free- 
dom and  its  dependence  upon  a  congruity  of  environ- 


306         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

merit  with  human  wants,  an  agreement  which  can  be 
obtained  only  by  profound  thought  and  unremitting 
application.  For  freedom  as  a  fact  depends  upon  con- 
ditions of  work  which  are  socially  and  scientifically 
buttressed.  Since  industry  covers  the  most  pervasive 
relations  of  man  with  his  environment,  freedom  is  unreal 
which  does  not  have  as  its  basis  an  economic  command 
of  environment. 

I  have  no  desire  to  add  another  to  the  cheap  and  easy 
solutions  which  exist  of  the  seeming  conflict  between 
freedom  and  organization.  It  is  reasonably  obvious 
that  organization  may  become  a  hindrance  to  freedom ; 
it  does  not  take  us  far  to  say  that  the  trouble  lies  not 
in  organization  but  in  over-organization.  At  the  same 
time,  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  no  effective  or 
objective  freedom  without  organization.  It  is  easy  to 
criticize  the  contract  theory  of  the  state  which  states 
that  individuals  surrender  some  at  least  of  their  natural 
liberties  in  order  to  make  secure  as  civil  liberties  what 
they  retain.  Nevertheless  there  is  some  truth  in  the 
idea  of  surrender  and  exchange.  A  certain  natural 
freedom  is  possessed  by  man.  That  is  to  say,  in  some 
respects  harmony  exists  between  a  man's  energies  and 
his  surroundings  such  that  the  latter  support  and  exe- 
cute his  purposes.  In  so  far  he  is  free;  without  such 
a  basic  natural  support,  conscious  contrivances  of  leg- 
islation, administration  and  deliberate  human  institu- 
tion of  social  arrangements  cannot  take  place.  In  this 
sense  natural  freedom  is  prior  to  political  freedom  and 
is  its  condition.  But  we  cannot  trust  wholly  to  a  free- 


WHAT  IS  FREEDOM?  307 

dom  thus  procured.  It  is  at  the  mercy  of  accident. 
Conscious  agreements  among  men  must  supplement  and 
in  some  degree  supplant  freedom  of  action  which  is  the 
gift  of  nature.  In  order  to  arrive  at  these  agreements, 
individuals  have  to  make  concessions.  They  must  con- 
sent to  curtailment  of  some  natural  liberties  in  order 
that  any  of  them  may  be  rendered  secure  and  enduring. 
They  must,  in  short,  enter  into  an  organization  with 
other  human  beings  so  that  the  activities  of  others  may 
be  permanently  counted  upon  to  assure  regularity  of 
action  and  far-reaching  scope  of  plans  and  courses  of 
action.  The  procedure  is  not,  in  so  far,  unlike  surren- 
dering a  portion  of  one's  income  in  order  to  buy  insur- 
ance against  future  contingencies,  and  thus  to  render 
the  future  course  of  life  more  equably  secure.  It  would 
be  folly  to  maintain  that  there  is  no  sacrifice;  we  can 
however  contend  that  the  sacrifice  is  a  reasonable  one, 
justified  by  results. 

Viewed  in  this  light,  the  relation  of  individual  free- 
dom to  organization  is  seen  to  be  an  experimental  af- 
fair. It  is  not  capable  of  being  settled  by  abstract 
theory.  Take  the  question  of  labor  unions  and  the 
closed  or  open  shop.  It  is  folly  to  fancy  that  no  re- 
strictions and  surrenders  of  prior  freedoms  and  pos- 
sibilities of  future  freedoms  are  involved  in  the  exten- 
sion of  this  particular  form  of  organization.  But  to 
condemn  such  organization  on  the  theoretical  ground 
that  a  restriction  of  liberty  is  entailed  is  to  adopt  a 
position  which  would  have  been  fatal  to  every  advance 
step  in  civilization,  and  to  every  net  gain  in  effective 


308  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

freedom.  Every  such  question  is  to  be  judged  not  on 
the  basis  of  antecedent  theory  but  on  the  basis  of  con- 
crete consequences.  The  question  is  to  the  balance  of 
freedom  and  security  achieved,  as  compared  with  prac- 
ticable alternatives.  Even  the  question  of  the  point 
where  membership  in  an  organization  ceases  to  be  a 
voluntary  matter  and  becomes  coercive  or  required,  is 
also  an  experimental  matter,  a  thing  to  be  decided  by 
scientifically  conducted  study  of  consequences,  of  pros 
and  cons.  It  is  definitely  an  affair  of  specific  detail, 
not  of  wholesale  theory.  It  is  equally  amusing  to  see 
one  man  denouncing  on  grounds  of  pure  theory  the 
coercion  of  workers  by  a  labor  union  while  he  avails 
himself  of  the  increased  power  due  to  corporate  action 
in  business  and  praises  the  coercion  of  the  political 
state;  and  to  see  another  man  denouncing  the  latter  as 
pure  tyranny,  while  lauding  the  power  of  industrial 
labor  organizations.  The  position  of  one  or  the  other 
may  be  justified  in  particular  cases,  but  justification 
is  due  to  results  in  practice  not  to  general  theory. 

Organization  tends,  however,  to  become  rigid  and 
to  limit  freedom.  In  addition  to  security  and  energy 
in  action,  novelty,  risk,  change  are  ingredients  of  the 
freedom  which  men  desire.  Variety  is  more  than  the 
spice  of  life;  it  is  largely  of  its  essence,  making  a  dif- 
ference between  the  free  and  the  enslaved.  Invariant 
virtue  appears  to  be  as  mechanical  as  uninterrupted 
vice,  for  true  excellence  changes  with  conditions.  Un- 
less character  rises  to  overcome  some  new  difficulty  or 
conquer  some  temptation  from  an  unexpected  quarter 


WHAT  IS  FREEDOM?  309 

we  suspect  its  grain  is  only  a  veneer.  Choice  is  an  ele- 
ment in  freedom  and  there  can  be  no  choice  without 
unrealized  and  precarious  possibilities.  It  is  this  de- 
mand for  genuine  contingency  which  is  caricatured  in 
the  orthodox  doctrine  of  a  freedom  of  indifference,  a 
power  to  choose  this  way  or  that  apart  from  any  habit 
or  impulse,  without  even  a  desire  on  the  part  of  will  to 
show  off.  Such  an  indetermination  of  choice  is  not 
desired  by  the  lover  of  either  reason  or  excitement. 
The  theory  of  arbitrary  free  choice  represents  indeter- 
minateness  of  conditions  grasped  in  a  vague  and  lazy 
fashion  and  hardened  into  a  desirable  attribute  of  will. 
Under  the  title  of  freedom  men  prize  such  uncertainty 
of  conditions  as  give  deliberation  and  choice  an  oppor- 
tunity. But  uncertainty  of  volition  which  is  more  than 
a  reflection  of  uncertainty  of  conditions  is  the  mark  of 
a  person  who  has  acquired  imbecility  of  character 
through  permanent  weakening  of  his  springs  of  action. 
Whether  or  not  indeterminateness,  uncertainty, 
actually  exists  in  the  world  is  a  difficult  question.  It  is 
easier  to  think  of  the  world  as  fixed,  settled  once  for 
all,  and  man  as  accumulating  all  the  uncertainty  there 
is  in  his  will  and  all  the  doubt  there  is  in  his  intellect. 
The  rise  of  natural  science  has  facilitated  this  dualistic 
partitioning,  making  nature  wholly  fixed  and  mind 
wholly  open  and  empty.  Fortunately  for  us  we  do  not 
have  to  settle  the  question.  A  hypothetical  answer  is 
enough.  //  the  world  is  already  done  and  done  for,  if 
its  character  is  entirely  achieved  so  that  its  behavior 
is  like  that  of  a  man  lost  in  routine,  then  the  only  free- 


310  HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

dom  for  which  man  can  hope  is  one  of  efficiency  in  overt 
action.  But  if  change  is  genuine,  if  accounts  are  still 
in  process  of  making,  and  if  objective  uncertainty  is  the 
stimulus  to  reflection,  then  variation  in  action,  novelty 
and  experiment,  have  a  true  meaning.  In  any  case  the 
question  is  an  objective  one.  It  concerns  not  man  in 
isolation  from  the  world  but  man  in  his  connection  with 
it.  A  world  that  is  at  points  and  times  indeterminate 
enough  to  call  out  deliberation  and  to  give  play  to 
choice  to  shape  its  future  is  a  world  in  which  will  is 
free,  not  because  it  is  inherently  vacillating  and  un- 
stable, but  because  deliberation  and  choice  are  determin- 
ing and  stabilizing  factors. 

Upon  an  empirical  view,  uncertainty,  doubt,  hesita- 
tion, contingency  and  novelty,  genuine  change  which  is 
not  mere  disguised  repetition,  are  facts.  Only  deduc- 
tive reasoning  from  certain  fixed  premisses  creates  a 
bias  in  favor  of  complete  determination  and  finality. 
To  say  that  these  things  exist  only  in  human  experience 
not  in  the  world,  and  exist  there  only  because  of  our 
"  finitude  "  is  dangerously  like  paying  ourselves  with 
words.  Empirically  the  life  of  man  seems  in  these  re- 
spects as  in  others  to  express  a  culmination  of  facts  in 
nature.  To  admit  ignorance  and  uncertainty  in  man 
while  denying  them  to  nature  involves  a  curious  dual- 
ism. Variability,  initiative,  innovation,  departure  from 
routine,  experimentation  are  empirically  the  manifesta- 
tion of  a  genuine  nisus  in  things.  At  all  events  it  is 
these  things  that  are  precious  to  us  under  the  name 
of  freedom.  It  is  their  elimination  from  the  life  of  a 


WHAT  IS  FREEDOM?  311 

slave  which  makes  his  life  servile,  intolerable  to  the 
freeman  who  has  once  been  on  his  own,  no  matter  what 
his  animal  comfort  and  security.  A  free  man  would 
rather  take  his  chance  in  an  open  world  than  be  guar- 
anteed in  a  closed  world. 

These  considerations  give  point  to  the  third  factor 
in  love  of  freedom :  the  desire  to  have  desire  count  as  a 
factor,  a  force.  Even  if  will  chooses  unaccountably, 
even  if  it  be  a  capricious  impulse,  it  does  not  follow 
that  there  are  real  alternatives,  genuine  possibilities, 
open  in  the  future.  What  we  want  is  possibilities  open 
in  the  world  not  in  the  will,  except  as  will  or  deliberate 
activity  reflects  the  world.  To  foresee  future  objective 
alternatives  and  to  be  able  by  deliberation  to  choose 
one  of  them  and  thereby  weight  its  chances  in  the 
struggle  for  future  existence,  measures  our  freedom. 
It  is  assumed  sometimes  that  if  it  can  be  shown  that 
deliberation  determines  choice  and  deliberation  is  de- 
termined by  character  and  conditions,  there  is  no  free- 
dom. This  is  like  saying  that  because  a  flower  comes 
from  root  and  stem  it  cannot  bear  fruit.  The  question 
is  not  what  are  the  antecedents  of  deliberation  and 
choice,  but  what  are  their  consequences.  What  do  they 
do  that  is  distinctive?  The  answer  is  that  they  give  us 
all  the  control  of  future  possibilities  which  is  open  to  us. 
And  this  control  is  the  crux  of  our  freedom.  Without 
it,  we  are  pushed  from  behind.  With  it  we  walk  in  the 
light. 

The  doctrine  that  knowledge,  intelligence  rather  than 
will,  constitutes  freedom  is  not  new.  It  has  been  A 


312         HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

preached  by  moralists  of  many  a  school.  All  ration- 
alists have  identified  freedom  with  action  emancipated 
by  insight  into  truth.  But  insight  into  necessity  has 
by  them  been  substituted  for  foresight  of  possibilities. 
Tolstoi  for  example  expressed  the  idea  of  Spinoza  and 
Hegel  when  he  said  that  the  ox  is  a  slave  as  long  as 
he  refuses  to  recognize  the  yoke  and  chafes  under  it, 
while  if  he  identifies  himself  with  its  necessity  and  draws 
willingly  instead  of  rebelliously,  he  is  free.  But  as  long 
as  the  yoke  is  a  yoke  it  is  impossible  that  voluntary 
identification  with  it  should  occur.  Conscious  submis- 
sion is  then  either  fatalistic  submissiveness  or  coward- 
ice. The  ox  accepts  in  fact  not  the  yoke  but  the  stall 
and  the  hay  to  which  the  yoke  is  a  necessary  incident. 
But  if  the  ox  foresees  the  consequences  of  the  use  of 
the  yoke,  if  he  anticipates  the  possibility  of  harvest, 
and  identifies  himself  not  with  the  yoke  but  with  the 
realization  of  its  possibilities,  he  acts  freely,  volunta- 
rily. He  hasn't  accepted  a  necessity  as  unavoidable;  he 
has  welcomed  a  possibility  as  a  desirability. 

Perception  of  necessary  law  plays,  indeed,  a  part. 
But  no  amount  of  insight  into  necessity  brings  with  it, 
as  such,  anything  but  a  consciousness  of  necessity. 
Freedom  is  the  "  truth  of  necessity  "  only  when  we  use 
one  "  necessity  "  to  alter  another.  When  we  use  the 
law  to  foresee  consequences  and  to  consider  how  they 
may  be  averted  or  secured,  then  freedom  begins.  Em- 
ploying knowledge  of  law  to  enforce  desire  in  execution 
gives  power  to  the  engineer.  Employing  knowledge  of 
law  in  order  to  submit  to  it  without  further  action  con- 


WHAT  IS  FREEDOM?  313 

stitutes  fatalism,  no  matter  how  it  be  dressed  up.  Thus 
we  recur  to  our  main  contention.  Morality  depends 
upon  events,  not  upon  commands  and  ideals  alien  to 
nature.  But  intelligence  treats  events  as  moving,  as 
fraught  with  possibilities,  not  as  ended,  final.  In  fore- 
casting their  possibilities,  the  distinction  between  bet- 
ter and  worse  arises.  Human  desire  and  ability  cooper- 
ates with  this  or  that  natural  force  according  as  this 
or  that  eventuality  is  judged  better.  We  do  not  use 
the  present  to  control  the  future.  We  use  the  fore- 
sight of  the  future  to  refine  and  expand  present  activ- 
ity. In  this  use  of  desire,  deliberation  and  choice,  free- 
dom is  actualized. 


IV 


Intelligence  becomes  ours  in  the  degree  in  which  we 
use  it  and  accept  responsibility  for  consequences.  It 
is  not  ours  originally  or  by  production.  "  It  thinks  " 
is  a  truer  psychological  statement  than  "  I  think." 
Thoughts  sprout  and  vegetate ;  ideas  proliferate.  They 
come  from  deep  unconscious  sources.  "  I  think  "  is  a 
statement  about  voluntary  action.  Some  suggestion 
surges  from  the  unknown.  Our  active  body  of  habits 
appropriates  it.  The  suggestion  then  becomes  an  asser- 
tion. It  no  longer  merely  comes  to  us.  It  is  accepted 
and  uttered  by  us.  We  act  upon  it  and  thereby  assume, 
by  implication,  its  consequences.  The  stuff  of  belief 
and  proposition  is  not  originated  by  us.  It  comes  to  us 
from  others,  by  education,  tradition  and  the  suggestion 
of  the  environment.  Our  intelligence  is  bound  up,  so 
far  as  its  materials  are  concerned,  with  the  community 
life  of  which  we  are  a  part.  We  know  what  it  communi- 
cates to  us,  and  know  according  to  the  habits  it  forms 
in  us.  Science  is  an  affair  of  civilization  not  of  indi- 
vidual intellect. 

So  with  conscience.  When  a  child  acts,  those  about 
him  re-act.  They  shower  encouragement  upon  him, 
visit  him  with  approval,  or  they  bestow  frowns  and 
rebuke.  What  others  do  to  us  when  we  act  is  as  nat- 
ural a  consequence  of  our  action  as  what  the  fire  does 

314 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  315 

to  us  when  we  plunge  our  hands  in  it.  The  social  en- 
vironment may  be  as  artificial  as  you  please.  But  its 
action  in  response  to  ours  is  natural  not  artificial.  In 
language  and  imagination  we  rehearse  the  responses  of 
others  just  as  we  dramatically  enact  other  consequences. 
We  foreknow  how  others  will  act,  and  the  foreknowl- 
edge is  the  beginning  of  judgment  passed  on  action.  We 
know  with  them;  there  is  conscience.  An  assembly  is 
formed  within  our  breast  which  discusses  and  appraises 
proposed  and  performed  acts.  The  community  with- 
out becomes  a  forum  and  tribunal  within,  a  judgment- 
seat  of  charges,  assessments  and  exculpations.  Our 
thoughts  of  our  own  actions  are  saturated  with  the 
ideas  that  others  entertain  about  them,  ideas  which 
have  been  expressed  not  only  in  explicit  instruction  but 
still  more  effectively  in  reaction  to  our  acts. 

Liability  is  the  beginning  of  responsibility.  We  are 
held  accountable  by  others  for  the  consequences  of  our 
acts.  They  visit  their  like  and  dislike  of  these  con- 
sequences upon  us.  In  vain  do  we  claim  that  these  are 
not  ours;  that  they  are  products  of  ignorance  not 
design,  or  are  incidents  in  the  execution  of  a  most  laud- 
able scheme.  Their  authorship  is  imputed  to  us.  We 
are  disapproved,  and  disapproval  is  not  an  inner  state 
of  mind  but  a  most  definite  act.  Others  say  to  us  by 
their  deeds  we  do  not  care  a  fig  whether  you  did  this 
deliberately  or  not.  We  intend  that  you  shall  deliber- 
ate before  you  do  it  again,  and  that  if  possible  your 
deliberation  shall  prevent  a  repetition  of  this  act  we 
object  to.  The  reference  in  blame  and  every  unfavor- 


316          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

able  judgment  is  prospective,  not  retrospective.  The- 
ories about  responsibility  may  become  confused,  but  in 
practice  no  one  is  stupid  enough  to  try  to  change  the 
past.  Approbation  and  disapprobation  are  ways  of 
influencing  the  formation  of  habits  and  aims ;  that  is, 
of  influencing  future  acts.  The  individual  is  held  ac- 
countable for  what  he  has  done  in  order  that  he  may  be 
responsive  in  what  he  is  going  to  do.  Gradually  per- 
sons learn  by  dramatic  imitation  to  hold  themselves 
accountable,  and  liability  becomes  a  voluntary  delib- 
erate acknowledgment  that  deeds  are  our  own,  that 
their  consequences  come  from  us. 

These  two  facts,  that  moral  judgment  and  moral 
responsibility  are  the  work  wrought  in  us  by  the  social 
environment,  signify  that  all  morality  is  social;  not 
because  we  ought  to  take  into  account  the  effect  of  our 
acts  upon  the  welfare  of  others,  but  because  of  facts. 
Others  do  take  account  of  what  we  do,  and  they  re- 
spond accordingly  to  our  acts.  Their  responses  actu- 
ally do  affect  the  meaning  of  what  we  do.  The  sig- 
nificance thus  contributed  is  as  inevitable  as  is  the  effect 
of  interaction  with  the  physical  environment.  In  fact 
as  civilization  advances  the  physical  environment  gets 
itself  more  and  more  humanized,  for  the  meaning  of 
physical  energies  and  events  becomes  involved  with  the 
part  they  play  in  human  activities.  Our  conduct  ** 
socially  conditioned  whether  we  perceive  the  fact  or 
not. 

The  effect  of  custom  on  habit,  and  of  habit  upon 
thought  is  enough  to  prove  this  statement.  When  we 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  317 

begin  to  forecast  consequences,  the  consequences  that 
most  stand  out  are  those  which  will  proceed  from  other 
people.  The  resistance  and  the  cooperation  of  others 
is  the  central  fact  in  the  furtherance  or  failure  of  our 
schemes.  Connections  with  our  fellows  furnish  both  the 
opportunities  for  action  and  the  instrumentalities  by 
which  we  take  advantage  of  opportunity.  All  of  the 
actions  of  an  individual  bear  the  stamp  of  his  com- 
munity as  assuredly  as  does  the  language  he  speaks. 
Difficulty  in  reading  the  stamp  is  due  to  variety  of  im- 
pressions in  consequence  of  membership  in  many  groups. 
This  social  saturation  is,  I  repeat,  a  matter  of  fact, 
not  of  what  should  be,  not  of  what  is  desirable  or  un- 
desirable. It  does  not  guarantee  the  Tightness  of  good- 
ness of  an  act;  there  is  no  excuse  for  thinking  of  evil 
action  as  individualistic  a,nd  right  action  as  social. 
Deliberate  unscrupulous  pursuit  of  self-interest  is  as 
much  conditioned  upon  social  opportunities,  training 
and  assistance  as  is  the  course  of  action  prompted  by 
a  beaming  benevolence.  •  The  difference  lies  in  the  qual- 
ity and  degree  of  the  perception  of  ties  and  interde- 
pendencies ;  in  the  use  to  which  they  are  put.  Consider 
the  form  commonly  assumed  today  by  self-seeking; 
namely  command  of  money  and  economic  power. 
Money  is  a  social  institution;  property  is  a  legal  cus- 
tom; economic  opportunities  are  dependent  upon  the 
state  of  society;  the  objects  aimed  at,  the  rewards 
sought  for,  are  what  they  are  because  of  social  admira- 
tion, prestige,  competition  and  power.  If  money-mak- 
ing is  morally  obnoxious  it  is  because  of  the  way  these 


318          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

social  facts  are  handled,  not  because  a  money-making 
man  has  withdrawn  from  society  into  an  isolated  self- 
hood or  turned  his  back  upon  society.  His  "  individ- 
ualism "  is  not  found  in  his  original  nature  but  in  his 
habits  acquired  under  social  influences.  It  is  found  in 
his  concrete  aims,  and  these  are  reflexes  of  social  con- 
ditions. Well-grounded  moral  objection  to  a  mode  of 
conduct  rests  upon  the  kind  of  social  connections  that 
figure,  not  upon  lack  of  social  aim.  A  man  may  at- 
tempt to  utilize  social  relationships  for  his  own  ad- 
vantage in  an  inequitable  way;  he  may  intentionally 
or  unconsciously  try  to  make  them  feed  one  of  his  own 
appetites.  Then  he  is  denounced  as  egoistic.  But  both 
his  course  of  action  and  the  disapproval  he  is  subject 
to  are  facts  within  society.  They  are  social  phe- 
nomena. He  pursues  his  unjust  advantage  as  a  social 
asset. 

Explicit  recognition  of  this  fact  is  a  prerequisite  of 
improvement  in  moral  education  and  of  an  intelligent 
understanding  of  the  chief  ideas  or  "  categories  "  of 
morals.  Morals  is  as  much  a  matter  of  interaction  of 
a  person  with  his  social  environment  as  walking  is  an 
interaction  of  legs  with  a  physical  environment.  The 
character  of  walking  depends  upon  the  strength  and 
competency  of  legs.  But  it  also  depends  upon  whether 
a  man  is  walking  in  a  bog  or  on  a  paved  street,  upon 
whether  there  is  a  safeguarded  path  set  aside  or  whether 
he  has  to  walk  amid  dangerous  vehicles.  If  the  stand- 
ard of  morals  is  low  it  is  because  the  education  given 
by  the  interaction  of  the  individual  with  his  social  en- 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  319 

vironment  is  defective.  Of  what  avail  is  it  to  preach 
unassuming  simplicity  and  contentment  of  life  when 
communal  admiration  goes  to  the  man  who  "  succeeds  '* 
— who  makes  himself  conspicuous  and  envied  because  of 
command  of  money  and  other  forms  of  power?  If  a 
child  gets  on  by  peevishness  or  intrigue,  then  others 
are  his  accomplices  who  assist  in  the  habits  which  are 
built  up.  The  notion  that  an  abstract  ready-made 
conscience  exists  in  individuals  and  that  it  is  only  nec- 
essary to  make  an  occasional  appeal  to  it  and  to  indulge 
in  occasional  crude  rebukes  and  punishments,  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  causes  of  lack  of  definitive  and  orderly 
moral  advance.  For  it  is  associated  with  lack  of  at- 
tention to  social  forces. 

There  is  a  peculiar  inconsistency  in  the  current  idea 
that  morals  ought  to  be  social.  The  introduction  of 
the  moral  "  ought "  into  the  idea  contains  an  implicit 
assertion  that  morals  depend  upon  something  apart 
from  social  relations.  Morals  are  social.  The  ques- 
tion of  ought,  should  be,  is  a  question  of  better  and 
worse  in  social  affairs.  The  extent  to  which  the  weight 
of  theories  has  been  thrown  against  the  perception  of 
the  place  of  social  ties  and  connections  in  moral  activ- 
ity is  a  fair  measure  of  the  extent  to  which  social  forces 
work  blindly  and  develop  an  accidental  morality.  The 
chief  obstacle  for  example  to  recognizing  the  truth  of 
a  proposition  frequently  set  forth  in  these  pages  to  the 
effect  that  all  conduct  is  potential,  if  not  actual,  mat- 
ter of  moral  judgment  is  the  habit  of  identifying  moral 
judgment  with  praise  and  blame.  So  great  is  the  in- 


820          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

fluence  of  this  habit  that  it  is  safe  to  say  that  every 
professed  moralist  when  he  leaves  the  pages  of  theory 
and  faces  some  actual  item  of  his  own  or  others'  be- 
havior, first  or  "  instinctively  "  thinks  of  acts  as  moral 
or  non-moral  in  the  degree  in  which  they  are  exposed  to 
condemnation  or  approval.  Now  this  kind  of  judgment 
is  certainly  not  one  which  could  profitably  be  dispensed 
with.  Its  influence  is  much  needed.  But  the  tendency 
to  equate  it  with  all  moral  judgment  is  largely  re- 
sponsible for  the  current  idea  that  there  is  a  sharp 
line  between  moral  conduct  and  a  larger  region  of  non- 
moral  conduct  which  is  a  matter  of  expediency,  shrewd- 
ness, success  or  manners. 

Moreover  this  tendency  is  a  chief  reason  why  the 
social  forces  effective  in  shaping  actual  morality  work 
blindly  and  unsatisfactorily.  Judgment  in  which  the 
emphasis  falls  upon  blame  and  approbation  has  more 
heat  than  light.  It  is  more  emotional  than  intellectual. 
It  is  guided  by  custom,  personal  convenience  and  re- 
sentment rather  than  by  insight  into  causes  and  con- 
sequences. It  makes  toward  reducing  moral  instruc- 
tion, the  educative  influence  of  social  opinion,  to  an 
immediate  personal  matter,  that  is  to  say,  to  an  adjust- 
ment of  personal  likes  and  dislikes.  Fault-finding  cre- 
ates resentment  in  the  one  blamed,  and  approval,  com- 
placency, rather  than  a  habit  of  scrutinizing  conduct 
objectively.  It  puts  those  who  are  sensitive  to  the 
judgments  of  others  in  a  standing  defensive  attitude, 
creating  an  apologetic,  self-accusing  and  self-exculpat- 
ing habit  of  mind  when  what  is  needed  is  an  impersonal 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  321 

impartial  habit  of  observation.  "  Moral  "  persons  get 
so  occupied  with  defending  their  conduct  from  real  and 
imagined  criticism  that  they  have  little  time  left  to  see 
what  their  acts  really  amount  to,  and  the  habit  of  self- 
blame  inevitably  extends  to  include  others  since  it  is  a 
habit. 

Now  it  is  a  wholesome  thing  for  any  one  to  be 
made  aware  that  thoughtless,  self-centered  action  on 
his  part  exposes  him  to  the  indignation  and  dislike  of 
others.  There  is  no  one  who  can  be  safely  trusted  to 
be  exempt  from  immediate  reactions  of  criticism,  and 
there  are  few  who  do  not  need  to  be  braced  by  occa- 
sional expressions  of  approval.  But  these  influences  are 
immensely  overdone  in  comparison  with  the  assistance 
that  might  be  given  by  the  influence  of  social  judg- 
ments which  operate  without  accompaniments  of  praise 
and  blame;  which  enable  an  individual  to  see  for  him- 
self what  he  is  doing,  and  which  put  him  in  command  of 
a  method  of  analyzing  the  obscure  and  usually  un- 
avowed  forces  which  move  him  to  act.  We  need  a  per- 
meation of  judgments  on  conduct  by  the  method  and 
materials  of  a  science  of  human  nature.  Without  such 
enlightenment  even  the  best-intentioned  attempts  at 
the  moral  guidance  and  improvement  of  others  often 
eventuate  in  tragedies  of  misunderstanding  and  division, 
as  is  so  often  seen  in  the  relations  of  parents  and 
children. 

The  development  therefore  of  a  more  adequate  sci- 
ence of  human  nature  is  a  matter  of  first-rate  impor- 
tance. The  present  revolt  against  the  notion  that  psy- 


322          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

chology  is  a  science  of  consciousness  may  well  turn  out 
in  the  future  to  be  the  beginning  of  a  definitive  turn 
in  thought  and  action.  Historically  there  are  good 
reasons  for  the  isolation  and  exaggeration  of  the  con- 
scious phase  of  human  action,  an  isolation  which  for- 
got that  "  conscious  "  is  an  adjective  of  some  acts  and 
which  erected  the  resulting  abstraction,  **  conscious- 
ness," into  a  noun,  an  existence  separate  and  complete. 
These  reasons  are  interesting  not  only  to  the  student 
of  technical  philosophy  but  also  to  the  student  of  the 
history  of  culture  and  even  of  politics.  They  have  to 
do  with  the  attempt  to  drag  realities  out  of  occult  es- 
sences and  hidden  forces  and  get  them  into  the  light  of 
day.  They  were  part  of  the  general  movement  called 
phenomenalism,  and  of  the  growing  importance  of  in- 
dividual life  and  private  voluntary  concerns.  But  the 
effect  was  to  isolate  the  individual  from  his  connections 
both  with  his  fellows  and  with  nature,  and  thus  to  cre- 
ate an  artificial  human  nature,  one  not  capable  of  being 
understood  and  effectively  directed  on  the  basis  of 
analytic  understanding.  It  shut  out  from  view,  not  to 
say  from  scientific  examination,  the  forces  which  really 
move  human  nature.  It  took  a  few  surface  phenomena 
for  the  whole  story  of  significant  human  motive-forces 
and  acts. 

As  a  consequence  physical  science  and  its  technolog- 
ical applications  were  highly  developed  while  the  sci- 
ence of  man,  moral  science,  is  backward.  I  believe 
that  it  is  not  possible  to  estimate  how  much  of  the  dif- 
ficulties of  the  present  world  situation  are  due  to  the 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  323 

disproportion  and  unbalance  thus  introduced  into  af- 
fairs. It  would  have  seemed  absurd  to  say  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century  that  in  the  end  the  alteration  in 
methods  of  physical  investigation  which  was  then  be- 
ginning would  prove  more  important  than  the  religious 
wars  of  that  century.  Yet  the  wars  marked  the  end 
of  one  era ;  the  dawn  of  physical  science  the  beginning 
of  a  new  one.  And  a  trained  imagination  may  discover 
that  the  nationalistic  and  economic  wars  which  are  the 
chief  outward  mark  of  the  present  are  in  the  end  to  be 
less  significant  than  the  development  of  a  science  of 
human  nature  now  inchoate. 

It  sounds  academic  to  say  that  substantial  bettering 
of  social  relations  waits  upon  the  growth  of  a  scientific 
social  psychology.  For  the  term  suggests  something 
specialized  and  remote.  But  the  formation  of  habits  of 
belief,  desire  and  judgment  is  going  on  at  every  instant 
under  the  influence  of  the  conditions  set  by  men's 
contact,  intercourse  and  associations  with  one  another. 
This  is  the  fundamental  fact  in  social  life  and  in  per- 
sonal character.  It  is  the  fact  about  which  traditional 
human  science  gives  no  enlightenment — a  fact  which 
this  traditional  science  blurs  and  virtually  denies.  The 
enormous  role  played  in  popular  morals  by  appeal  to 
the  supernatural  and  quasi-magical  is  in  effect  a  des- 
perate admission  of  the  futility  of  our  science.  Con- 
sequently the  whole  matter  of  the  formation  of  the  pre- 
dispositions which  effectively  control  human  relation 
ships  is  left  to  accident,  to  custom  and  immediate  per- 
sonal likings,  resentments  and  ambitions.  It  is  a  com- 


324          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

monplace  that  modern  industry  and  commerce  are  con- 
ditioned upon  a  control  of  physical  energies  due  to 
proper  methods  of  physical  inquiry  and  analysis.  We 
have  no  social  arts  which  are  comparable  because  we 
have  so  nearly  nothing  in  the  way  of  psychological  sci- 
ence. Yet  through  the  development  of  physical  science, 
and  especially  of  chemistry,  biology,  physiology,  med- 
icine and  anthropology  we  now  have  the  basis  for  the 
development  of  such  a  science  of  man.  Signs  of  its 
coming  into  existence  are  present  in  the  movements  in 
clinical,  behavioristic  and  social  (in  its  narrower  sense) 
psychology. 

At  present  we  not  only  have  no  assured  means  of 
forming  character  except  crude  devices  of  blame,  praise, 
exhortation  and  punishment,  but  the  very  meaning  of 
the  general  notions  of  moral  inquiry  is  matter  of  doubt 
and  dispute.  The  reason  is  that  these  notions  are  dis- 
cussed in  isolation  from  the  concrete  facts  of  the  in- 
teractions of  human  beings  with  one  another — an  ab- 
straction as  fatal  as  was  the  old  discussion  of  phlogis- 
ton, gravity  and  vital  force  apart  from  concrete  cor- 
relations of  changing  events  with  one  another.  Take 
for  example  such  a  basic  conception  as  that  of  Right 
involving  the  nature  of  authority  in  conduct.  There 
is  no  need  here  to  rehearse  the  multitude  of  contending 
views  which  give  evidence  that  discussion  of  this  matter 
is  still  in  the  realm  of  opinion.  We  content  ourselves 
with  pointing  out  that  this  notion  is  the  last  resort  of 
the  anti-empirical  school  in  morals  and  that  it  proves 
the  effect  of  neglect  of  social  conditions. 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  325 

In  effect  its  adherents  argue  as  follows :  "  Let  us  con- 
cede that  concrete  ideas  about  right  and  wrong  and 
particular  notions  of  what  is  obligatory  have  grown  up 
within  experience.  But  we  cannot  admit  this  about  tht 
idea  of  Right,  of  Obligation  itself.  Why  does  moral 
authority  exist  at  all?  Why  is  the  claim  of  the  Right 
recognized  in  conscience  even  by  those  who  violate  it 
in  deed?  Our  opponents  say  that  such  and  such  a 
course  is  wise,  expedient,  better.  But  why  act  for  the 
wise,  or  good,  or  better?  Why  not  follow  our  own  im- 
mediate devices  if  we  are  so  inclined?  There  is  only 
one  answer :  We  have  a  moral  nature,  a  conscience,  call 
it  what  you  will.  And  this  nature  responds  directly  in 
acknowledgment  of  the  supreme  authority  of  the  Right 
over  all  claims  of  inclination  and  habit.  We  may  not 
act  in  accordance  with  this  acknowledgment,  but  we 
still  know  that  the  authority  of  the  moral  law,  although 
not  its  power,  is  unquestionable.  Men  may  differ  in- 
definitely according  to  what  their  experience  has  been  as 
to  just  what  is  Right,  what  its  contents  are.  But  they 
all  spontaneously  agree  in  recognizing  the  supremacy  of 
the  claims  of  whatever  is  thought  of  as  Right.  Other- 
wise there  would  be  no  such  thing  as  morality,  but 
merely  calculations  of  how  to  satisfy  desire. 

Grant  the  foregoing  argument,  and  all  the  apparatus 
of  abstract  moralism  follows  in  its  wake.  A  remote 
goal  of  perfection,  ideals  that  are  contrary  in  a  whole- 
sale way  to  what  is  actual,  a  free  will  of  arbitrary 
choice;  all  of  these  conceptions  band  themselves  to- 
gether with  that  of  a  non-empirical  authority  of  Right 


826          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

and  a  non-empirical  conscience  which  acknowledges  it. 
They  constitute  its  ceremonial  or  formal  train. 

Why,  indeed,  acknowledge  the  authority  of  Right? 
That  many  persons  do  not  acknowledge  it  in  fact,  in 
action,  and  that  all  persons  ignore  it  at  times,  is  as- 
sumed by  the  argument.  Just  what  is  the  significance 
of  an  alleged  recognition  of  a  supremacy  which  is  con- 
tinually denied  in  fact?  How  much  would  be  lost  if  it 
were  dropped  out,  and  we  were  left  face  to  face  with 
actual  facts?  If  a  man  lived  alone  in  the  world  there 
might  be  some  sense  in  the  question  "  Why  be  moral?  " 
were  it  not  for  one  thing:  No  such  question  would  then 
arise.  As  it  is,  we  live  in  a  world  where  other  persons 
live  too.  Our  acts  affect  them.  They  perceive  these 
effects,  and  react  upon  us  in  consequence.  Because  they 
are  living  beings  they  make  demands  upon  us  for  cer- 
tain things  from  us.  They  approve  and  condemn — not 
in  abstract  theory  but  in  what  they  do  to  us.  The  an- 
swer to  the  question  "  Why  not  put  your  hand  in  the 
fire?  "  is  the  answer  of  fact.  If  you  do  your  hand  will 
be  burnt.  The  answer  to  the  question  why  acknowledge 
the  right  is  of  the  same  sort.  For  Right  is  only  an 
abstract  name  for  the  multitude  of  concrete  demands 
in  action  which  others  impress  upon  us,  and  of  which 
we  are  obliged,  if  we  would  live,  to  take  some  account. 
Its  authority  is  the  exigency  of  their  demands,  the  ef- 
ficacy of  their  insistencies.  There  may  be  good  ground 
for  the  contention  that  in  theory  the  idea  of  the  right 
is  subordinate  to  that  of  the  good,  being  a  statement 
of  the  course  proper  to  attain  good.  But  in  fact  it 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  527 

signifies  the  totality  of  social  pressures  exercised  upon 
us  to  induce  us  to  think  and  desire  in  certain  ways. 
Hence  the  right  can  in  fact  become  the  road  to  the  good 
only  as  the  elements  that  compose  this  unremitting 
pressure  are  enlightened,  only  as  social  relationships 
become  themselves  reasonable. 

It  will  be  retorted  that  all  pressure  is  a  non-moral 
affair  partaking  of  force,  not  of  right ;  that  right  must 
be  ideal.  Thus  we  are  invited  to  enter  again  the  circle 
in  which  the  ideal  has  no  force  and  social  actualities  no 
ideal  quality.  We  refuse  the  invitation  because  social 
pressure  is  involved  in  our  own  lives,  as  much  so  as  the 
air  we  breathe  and  the  ground  we  walk  upon.  If  we 
had  desires,  judgments,  plans,  in  short  a  mind,  apart 
from  social  connections,  then  the  latter  would  be  exter- 
nal and  their  action  might  be  regarded  as  that  of  a  non- 
moral  force.  But  we  live  mentally  as  physically  only 
in  and  because  of  our  environment.  Social  pressure  is 
but  a  name  for  the  interactions  which  are  always  going 
on  and  in  which  we  participate,  living  so  far  as  we  par- 
take and  dying  so  far  as  we  do  not.  The  pressure  is 
not  ideal  but  empirical,  yet  empirical  here  means  only 
actual.  It  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  considera- 
tions of  right  are  claims  originating  not  outside  of  life, 
but  within  it.  They  are  "  ideal "  in  precisely  the  de- 
gree in  which  we  intelligently  recognize  and  act  upon 
them,  just  as  colors  and  canvas  become  ideal  when 
used  in  ways  that  give  an  added  meaning  to  life. 

Accordingly  failure  to  recognize  the  authority  of 
right  means  defect  in  effective  apprehension  of  the  real- 


328          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

ities  of  human  association,  not  an  arbitrary  exercise  of 
free  will.  This  deficiency  and  perversion  in  apprehen- 
sion indicates  a  defect  in  education — that  is  to  say,  in 
the  operation  of  actual  conditions,  in  the  consequences 
upon  desire  and  thought  of  existing  interactions  and 
interdependencies.  It  is  false  that  every  person  has  a 
consciousness  of  the  supreme  authority  of  right  and 
then  misconceives  it  or  ignores  it  in  action.  One  has 
such  a  sense  of  the  claims  of  social  relationships  as 
those  relationships  enforce  in  one's  desires  and  obser- 
vations. The  belief  in  a  separate,  ideal  or  transcen- 
dental, practically  ineffectual  Right  is  a  reflex  of  the 
inadequacy  with  which  existing  institutions  perform 
their  educative  office — their  office  in  generating  obser- 
vation of  social  continuities.  It  is  an  endeavor  to 
"  rationalize  "  this  defect.  Like  all  rationalizations,  it 
operates  to  divert  attention  from  the  real  state  of 
affairs.  Thus  it  helps  maintain  the  conditions  which 
created  it,  standing  in  the  way  of  effort  to  make  our 
institutions  more  humane  and  equitable.  A  theoretical 
acknowledgment  of  the  supreme  authority  of  Right,  of 
moral  law,  gets  twisted  into  an  effectual  substitute  for 
acts  which  would  better  the  customs  which  now  pro- 
duce vague,  dull,  halting  and  evasive  observation  of 
actual  social  ties.  We  are  not  caught  in  a  circle;  we 
traverse  a  spiral  in  which  social  customs  generate  some 
consciousness  of  interdependencies,  and  this  conscious- 
ness is  embodied  in  acts  which  in  improving  the  environ- 
ment generate  new  perceptions  of  social  ties,  and  so 
on  forever.  The  relationships,  the  interactions  are  for- 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  329 

ever  there  as  fact,  but  they  acquire  meaning  only  in 
the  desires,  judgments  and  purposes  they  awaken. 

We  recur  to  our  fundamental  propositions.  Morals 
is  connected  with  actualities  of  existence,  not  with 
ideals,  ends  and  obligations  independent  of  concrete 
actualities.  The  facts  upon  which  it  depends  are  those 
which  arise  out  of  active  connections  of  human  beings 
with  one  another,  the  consequences  of  their  mutually 
intertwined  activities  in  the  life  of  desire,  belief,  judg- 
ment, satisfaction  and  dissatisfaction.  In  this  sense 
conduct  and  hence  morals  are  social:  they  are  not  just 
things  which  ought  to  be  social  and  which  fail  to  come 
up  to  the  scratch.  But  there  are  enormous  differences 
of  better  and  worse  in  the  quality  of  what  is  social. 
Ideal  morals  begin  with  the  perception  of  these  dif- 
ferences. Human  interaction  and  ties  are  there,  are 
operative  in  any  case.  But  they  can  be  regulated,  em- 
ployed in  an  orderly  way  for  good  only  as  we  know  how 
to  observe  them.  And  they  cannot  be  observed  aright, 
they  cannot  be  understood  and  utilized,  when  the  mind 
is  left  to  itself  to  work  without  the  aid  of  science.  For 
the  natural  unaided  mind  means  precisely  the  habits 
of  belief,  thought  and  desire  which  have  been  acciden- 
tally generated  and  confirmed  by  social  institutions  or 
customs.  But  with  all  their  admixture  of  accident  and 
reasonableness  we  have  at  last  reached  a  point  where 
social  conditions  create  a  mind  capable  of  scientific 
outlook  and  inquiry.  To  foster  and  develop  this  spirit 
is  the  social  obligation  of  the  present  because  it  is  its 
urgent  need. 


330          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

Yet  the  last  word  is  not  with  obligation  nor  with  the 
future.  Infinite  relationships  of  man  with  his  fellows 
and  with  nature  already  exist.  The  ideal  means,  as 
we  have  seen,  a  sense  of  these  encompassing  continui- 
ties with  their  infinite  reach.  This  meaning  even  now 
attaches  to  present  activities  because  they  are  set  in  a 
whole  to  which  they  belong  and  which  belongs  to  them. 
Even  in  the  midst  of  conflict,  struggle  and  defeat  a 
consciousness  is  possible  of  the  enduring  and  compre- 
hending whole. 

To  be  grasped  and  held  this  consciousness  needs,  like 
every  form  of  consciousness,  objects,  symbols.  In  the 
past  men  have  sought  many  symbols  which  no  longer 
serve,  especially  since  men  have  been  idolaters  worship- 
ing symbols  as  things.  Yet  within  these  symbols  which 
have  so  often  claimed  to  be  realities  and  which  have  im- 
posed themselves  as  dogmas  and  intolerances,  there  has 
rarely  been  absent  some  trace  of  a  vital  and  enduring 
reality,  that  of  a  community  of  life  in  which  continuities 
of  existence  are  consummated.  Consciousness  of  the 
whole  has  been  connected  with  reverences,  affections, 
and  loyalties  which  are  communal.  But  special  ways  of 
expressing  the  communal  sense  have  been  established. 
They  have  been  limited  to  a  select  social  group;  they 
have  hardened  into  obligatory  rites  and  been  imposed 
as  conditions  of  salvation.  Religion  has  lost  itself  in 
cults,  dogmas  and  myths.  Consequently  the  office  of 
religion  as  sense  of  community  and  one's  place  in 
it  has  been  lost.  In  effect  religion  has  been  distorted 
into  a  possession — or  burden — of  a  limited  part  of 


MORALITY  IS  SOCIAL  331 

human  nature,  of  a  limited  portion  of  humanity  which 
finds  no  way  to  universalize  religion  except  by  imposing 
its  own  dogmas  and  ceremonies  upon  others ;  of  a  lim- 
ited class  within  a  partial  group;  priests,  saints,  a 
church.  Thus  other  gods  have  been  set  up  before  the 
one  God.  Religion  as  a  sense  of  the  whole  is  the  most 
individualized  of  all  things,  the  most  spontaneous,  un- 
definable  and  varied.  For  individuality  signifies  unique 
connections  in  the  whole.  Yet  it  lias  been  perverted 
into  something  uniform  and  immutable.  It  has  been 
formulated  into  fixed  and  defined  beliefs  expressed  in 
required  acts  and  ceremonies.  Instead  of  marking  the 
freedom  and  peace  of  the  individual  as  a  member  of  an 
infinite  whole,  it  has  been  petrified  into  a  slavery  of 
thought  and  sentiment,  an  intolerant  superiority  on 
the  part  of  the  few  and  an  intolerable  burden  on  the 
part  of  the  many. 

Yet  every  act  may  carry  within  itself  a  consoling  and 
supporting  consciousness  of  the  whole  to  which  it 
belongs  and  which  in  some  sense  belongs  to  it.  With 
responsibility  for  the  intelligent  determination  of  par- 
ticular acts  may  go  a  joyful  emancipation  from  the 
burden  for  responsibility  for  the  whole  which  sustains 
them,  giving  them  their  final  outcome  and  quality. 
There  is  a  conceit  fostered  by  perversion  of  religion 
which  assimilates  the  universe  to  our  personal  desires; 
but  there  is  also  a  conceit  of  carrying  the  load  of  the 
universe  from  which  religion  liberates  us.  Within  the 
flickering  inconsequential  acts  of  separate  selves  dwells 
a  sense  of  the  whole  which  claims  and  dignifies  them. 


S32          HUMAN  NATURE  AND  CONDUCT 

In  its  presence  we  put  off  mortality  and  live  in  the  uni- 
versal. The  life  of  the  community  in  which  we  live 
and  have  our  being  is  the  fit  symbol  of  this  relationship. 
The  acts  in  which  we  express  our  perception  of  the  ties 
which  bind  us  to  others  arc  its  only  rites  and  ceremonies. 


INDEX 


Absentmindedness,  173 
Accidents,   in   history,    101;    in 

consequences,  49,  51,  206-208, 

241,  253,  304,  309 
Acquisition,  116-118,  143-148 
Activity  is  natural,  118-123,  160, 

226,  293 

Aims,   see   Consequences,  Ends 
Alexander  M.,  28,  36 
Altruism,  133,  293 
Analysis,  183 
Anger,  90,  152 

Appetite,  7,  275;  see  Impulse 
Aristotle,  33,  109,  174,  224,  290 
Arts,  15,  23,  71,  159-164,  263 
Atomism  moral,  243 
Attitude,  41 ;  see  Habit 
Authority,  2,   65,   72,   79,    187, 

324 

Benevolence,  133 
Bergson,  73,  178,  245 
Blame,  18,  121,  320 

Causation,  18,  44 

Calculation,    189,    199-209;    see 

Deliberation 
Casuistry,  240 
Certainty,  love  of,  236 
Character,     denned,     38;     and 

consequences,  47 
Childhood,  2,  64,  89,  96,  99 
Choice,  192,  304,  311 
Classes,  2,  82,  270 
Classification,  131,  244 
Codes,  103 
Compensatory,   8,   30,   33,   257, 

275 
Conduct,  see  Character,  Habit, 

Impulse,  Intelligence 


Confidence,  139 

Conflict,  12,  39,  66,  82,  194,  208, 

217,  300 

Conscience,  184-188,  314 
Consciousness,  62,  179,  184,  208 
Consequences,  and  motives,  45- 

47;   and   aims,  225-229,   245- 

247 

Conservatism,  66,  106,  168 
Continuity,    12,    232,    239,    244, 

259 
Control,    21,    23,   37,    101,    139, 

148,  266-270;  see  Accident 
Conventions,  6,  97,  166 
Crowd  psychology,  60 
Creative    and    acquisitive,    143- 

148 
Customs  and  habits,  68-69;  and 

standards,      75-83;      rigidity, 

103-105 

Deliberation,  189-209;  as  dis- 
covery, 216 

Democracy,  61n,  66,   72 

Desire,  24,  33.  194.  234.  299. 
304;  and  intelligence,  248-264 ; 
object  of,  249-252 

Disposition,  41;  see  Habit 

Docility,  64,  97 

Dualism,  8,  12,  40,  55,  67,  71, 
147,  275,  309 

Economic  man,  220 
Economics,  9,  12,  120-124,  132, 

143-148,  212-221,  270-273,  305 
Education,  64,  72,  91,  107,  270, 

320 

Egotism,  7 
Emerson,  100,  144 
Emotion,  75,  83,  255,  264 


333 


334, 


INDEX 


End,  28,  34-37;  knowledge  as, 
187,  215;  nature  of,  223-237; 
of  desire,  250,  261;  and 
means,  269-272;  see  Conse- 
quences, Means 

Environments,  2,  10,  15,  18,  21, 
51,  151,  159,  179,  316 

Epicureanism,  205,  291 

Equilibration,  179,  252 

Evolution,  284-287,  297 

Execution,  of  desires,  33-35 

Expediency,  49,  189,  210;  see 
Deliberation 

Experience,  31,  245 

Experimentation,  moral,  56,  307 

Fallacy,  philosophic,  175 

Fanaticism,  228 

Fear,  111,  132-133,  154-155,  237 

Fiat  of  will,  29 

Foresight,    204-206,    238,    265- 

270;  see  Deliberation,  Ends 
Freedom,  8,  165;  three  phases 

of,  303-313;  see  Will 
Functions,  18 

Gain,  117 

Goal,  260,  265,  274,  281,  287- 
289;  see  Evolution,  Perfec- 
tion 

Good,  2,  44,  210-222,  274,  278 

Goodness,  4-8,  16,  43-45,  48,  67, 
227 

Good-will,  44 

Habits,  place  in  conduct,  14-88; 
and  desire,  24;  as  functions, 
14;  as  arts  or  abilities,  15,  64, 
66,  71,  170;  and  thought,  31- 
33,  66-69,  172-180,  182;  defini- 
tion, 41;  and  impulses,  90-98, 
107-111;  and  principles,  238 

Harmony,  natural,  159,  167,  298 

Hedonistic  calculus,  204 

Hegel,  312 

Helvetius,  106,  300 

Herd-instinct,  4 

History,  101,  110 


Hobbes,  133 

Human  nature,  1;  and  morals, 

1-13,    295;    alterability,    106- 

124 

Humility,  289 
Hypocrisy,  6 
Hypothesis,  moral,  239,  243 

Ideas,  see  Ends,  Thought 

Ideals  and  Idealism,  2,  8,  50, 
68,  77,  81,  99,  157,  166,  184, 
233,  236,  255,  259-264,  274, 
282-288,  301,  331 

Imagination,  52,  163,  190-192, 
204,  225,  234 

Imitation,  66,  97,  132 

Impulse,  place  in  conduct,  89- 
171;  secondary,  89;  inter- 
mediary, 169-170;  as  means 
of  reorganization,  93,  102, 
104,  179;  plastic,  95;  same  as 
human  instincts,  105n;  and 
habit,  107-111;  false  simplifi- 
cation, 131-149;  and  reason, 
196,  254 

Individualism,  7,  85,  93 

Industry,  11 

Infantilisms,  98 

Instinct,  not  fixed,  149-168;  and 
knowledge,  178;  see  Impulse 

Institutions,  9,  80,  102,  111,  166 

Intelligence,  10,  13,  51,  299,  312; 
place  of,  in  conduct,  172-277; 
relation  to  habits,  172-180, 
228;  and  desire,  248-264,  276 

Interpenetration  of  habits,  37- 
39 

Intuitions,  33,  188 

James,  Wm.,  112,  179,  195 
Justice,  18,  52,  198 

Kant,  44,  49,  55,  245 
Knowledge,  moral,  181-188;  see 
Conscience,  Intelligence 

Labor,  121,  144 
Language,  58,  79,  95 


INDEX 


335 


Le  Bon,  61 
Liberalism,  305 
Locke,  106 

Marx,  154,  273,  300 

Magic,  20,  26 

Meaning,  37,  90,  151,  207,  262, 
271,  280 

Means,  20;  relation  to  ends,  25- 
36,  218-220,  251;  see  Habit 

Mechanization,  28,  70,  96,  144 

Mediation,  197 

Mind,  61,  95;  and  habit,  175- 
180 

Mind  and  body,  30,  67,  71 

Mitchell,  W.  C.,  213 

Moore,  G.  E.,  241n 

Morals,  introduction,  40;  con- 
clusion, as  objective,  52;  of 
art,  167;  scope,  278-281 

Motives,  43-45,  118-122,  213, 
231,  329 

Natural  law  and  morals,  296- 

300 

Necessity,  312 
Nirvana,  175,  286 
Non-moral,  8,  27,  40,  188,  230 

Occult,  11 
Oligarchy,  2-3 
Optimism,  286-288 
Organization,  306 

Passion,  9,  193-196 

Pathology,  4,  50 

Perfection,  173-175,  223,  282 

Pessimism,  286 

Phantasies,  158,  164,  236 

Plato,  50,  78,  134,  290 

Play,  159-164 

Pleasure,  158,  200-205,  250 

Posture,  32 

Potentiality,  37 

Power,  will  to,  140-142 

Pragmatic  knowing,  181-188 
Principles,  2;  and  tendencies, 
49;  nature  of,  238-247 


Private,  9,  16,  43,  85 

Process  and  product,  142-143, 
280 

Progress,  10,  21,  93,  96,  101, 
105n;  in  science,  149;  nature 
of,  281-288 

Property,  116-118;  see  Eco- 
nomics 

Psycho-analysis,  34,  86,  133,  153, 
252 

Psychology  and  moral  theory, 
12,  46,  91;  social,  60-63,  84- 
88;  current,  118,  135,  147, 
155;  and  scientific  method, 
150,  322-324 

Punishment,  18 

Puritanism,  5,  157 

Purpose,  see  Ends 

Radicalism,  168 

Reactions,  157 

Realism,   176,  256,  298 

Reason,  pure,  31 ;  reasonable- 
ness, .67.  77,  193-198,  215 

RebellJon7T86- 

Reconstruction,  164 

Religion,  5,  263,  330-332 

Responsibility,  315 

Revolution,  10,  108 

Right,  324-328 

Romanticism,   6,    100,    166,   256 

Routine,  42,  66,  70,  98,  211,  232, 
238 

Satisfaction,  140,  158,  175,  210, 

213,  265,  285 
Savagery,  93,  101,  103 
Science  of  morals,  3,  11-12,  18, 

56,  224,  243,  296,  321 
Self,  16,  55,  85-87,  136-139,  217, 

292,  314 

Self-deception,  152,  252 
Self-love,  134-139,  293 
Sensations,  18,  31,  189 
Sentimentalism,  17 
Sex,  133,  150,  153,  164-165 
Social,  see  Environments 
Social  mind,  60-63 


336 


INDEX 


Socrates,  56 

Soul,  85,  94,  138,  176 

Spencer,  175,  297 

Standards,  75-82,  241 

Stimulation,   157 

Stimulus  and  response,  199-207 

Stuart,  H.  W.,  218 

Subjective,   16,  22,   27,   52,   54, 

85,  202;  see  Dualism 
Sublimation,  141,  156,  164,  194 
Success,  6,  173,  254 
Sumner,  77 
Suppression.  156,  166 
Synthesis,  183-184 

Tendency,  49 

Thought.  30,   67,   98,  108,   171, 

190,  200,  222,  258;  vices  of, 

197 


Tolstoi,  285,  312 

Tools,  25,  32;  intellectual,  244 

Transcendentalism,  50-52,  54,  81 


Universality,  245-247 
Utilitarianism,  50,  189,  199-209, 
211,  221-222,  291 


Virtues,  4,  16,  22;  see  Goodness 


War,  110-115 

Westermarck,  76 

Will,  and  habits,  25,  29,  40-44, 

259;   will  to  power,   140-143; 

freedom  of,  9 
Williams,  M.,  273n 


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